Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

Posts by Sherry Petersik

Sherry Petersik is one half of the duo behind the award-winning home improvement and do-it-yourself design blog, Young House Love. Together, she and her husband John have renovated seven homes, published two New York Times Bestselling books, and designed products sold in Target and Home Depot. They are currently enjoying their downsized home on Florida's Gulf Coast with their two kids and their dog, Penny.

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How To Make A Homemade Play Kitchen From A Cabinet

We did it. Holy cats, we did it. Just a few days before Christmas we started Clara’s homemade play-kitchen (in secret of course, since she thinks Santa brought it)… and we actually finished it on Christmas Eve! Yes folks, it was a Christmas miracle. We went into it with a goal of spending under $99 since this basic play-kitchen from Ikea is that price – but we wanted to add a bit more detail like oven knobs that actually turn, an oven light that goes on and off, a wire baking rack inside the oven instead of a shelf, and a real faucet (not plumbed of course, but movable!). So here’s how we made our own

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Painting Our Wood Cabinets Cloud Cover by Benjamin Moore

Ok, so we completed the door-painting process a few days ago (picture us doing the droopiest super-tired happy dance that you’ve ever seen) and we’re now into the “waiting game” portion of the cabinet painting process. But we couldn’t wait to share all the photos of everything both during the painting-process and now that they’re all glossy and finished, so here ya go: We used Benjamin Moore’s Advance paint in Cloud Cover in a satin finish (it’s a soft tonal taupey-gray color, so it’s not quite as bright as our glacier white counters for a subtle layered look). Benjamin Moore Advance paint (in the satin finish) actually came recommended by a few pro cabinet painters

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Priming Our Wood Kitchen Cabinets

Between finalizing our 260+ page book manuscript (due Jan 4th- ack!) and hosting/enjoying family time (and lots of delicious food), we’ve also been priming! Can I get a “holla!”? Or more likely, a “you’re crazy.” Thank goodness our guests are so understanding! Oh man, and it feels great to be seeing some progress. The beauty of primer is that it always looks a little rough (so you don’t have to stress about getting it to look perfect). By nature, it’s just a sticky sub-layer that helps grab paint and hold on for the long haul, so as long as you apply things thinly and evenly (drips = baaaaad), you’re all set to just follow the

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Twenty-Twelve Resolutions

Every year we publicly proclaim a few of our resolutions in the hope that it’ll light a fire under our arse (arses?) and help us “get there.” So without further ado (except for this gratuitous and very much in-progress pic of the cabinet doors being primed)… … here they are: Resolution #1 – To Get Around: We’re excited for 2012 to be a good travel year for us, since we have been invited to speak at the Portland Home & Garden Show in February (really? us?) and at the Haven Conference in Atlanta in June (we’re the keynote speakers, which makes us excited and nauseous all at the same time). So we’ll hopefully get to

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The Best Way To Prep Cabinets For Paint

I guess that title should really be “Puttering Around With Putty (aka: Wood Filler) And Sandpaper And A Spackle Knife And Deglosser.” But that was too long. In a nutshell, we prepped all of our cabinets for primer by: puttying all of our cabinet frames and drawers and doors sanding everything (to smooth the putty and rough things up for primer) deglossing everything (to further aid with adhesion) laying all doors and drawers out in the sunroom (on lifts) so we’re ready to prime But that’s not enough detail for chatterbugs like us. So let’s get into the nitty-gritty. First we used Elmer’s ProBond Professional Strength Wood Filler (we asked around for a favorite filler

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A Free Calendar Printable

First we’ll get to the freebie download for all of you lovely people, because you know we heart you for reading our little ol’ blog. Since we’ve made a tradition of designing a homemade calendar each year (and 2012 ain’t gonna wait just cuz we’re mid-kitchen reno) we stole a moment – while the wood putty dried – to throw something together for the big one-two. Our calendars from the last few years have all been text-based (you know, as opposed to full of photos). Like our 2010 calendar, where we assembled a dozen weird family phrases & inside jokes and laid them out in simple bright colors: Or our 2011 calendar, where we used

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Buying Metal Stools From An Industrial School Supply Shop

John wanted me to work Stool Boom into the post title because of this video (which he requests that you all check it out so that you can hum the song while reading this post). Anyway, now in stool news… we got them for our peninsula! And we’re so excited about 1) where we found them, and 2) the price (because four stools can definitely be a budget breaker if they’re priced at $250 a pop). But first, let’s chat about the kitchen budget in general for a second… We’ve actually spent some real money in certain areas like: new Corian counters (around $1700) new stainless appliances (around $2213 with the new microwave but not

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22 Free Holiday Art Ideas

I warned you that I was really excited to go all out for our first “real” Christmas in our new house, so it’s no surprise that I got giddy and decided to tackle an unexpected-ish space for holiday-ifaction. Was that enough hyphenated-not-real words for you? Anyway that space = the hallway. I actually switched out 22 frames (almost two dozen!) in our little hallway frame collection to make things a bit more festive. And it was free. Yeee-haw. Over the top? Maybe. But it makes us smile and was zero dollars. Holla. Let’s get on with the tour… When you look at the hallway from a distance, the change isn’t overly obvious, which we like

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Decorating The Outside Of Our House For Christmas

This holiday season is full of firsts for us. It’s the first time Clara can shout things like “I love you Santa!” to the inflatables at Home Depot (this actually happens quite often). It’s also the first time we got a real tree (even if it’s of the tabletop variety). And it’s our first real Christmas in this house (we moved last December but were still living out of boxes then). But perhaps our biggest first is actually decorating the outside of our house. We’ve never done that. Isn’t that crazy? What the heck were we waiting for? There’s definitely some magic to waiting until it gets dark, plugging everything in, and stepping back to

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Dude, We’ve Lived Here An Entire Year

Which means this time last year, we woke up to a surprise snowstorm… … that resulted in our UHaul slipping into the gutter of our old driveway (more on that here). Man, it feels like that was just yesterday. John and I still remember every word of that truck-snafu conversation… JOHN: Hey Sherry. Walk-through went fine. They’re off to go close and I’m headed to the new house. SHERRY: Okay, be very careful. It’s snowy out there so drive as slow as you need, even if people are honking at you. Just take your time. JOHN: I will. Don’t worry. SHERRY: Great. I just don’t want you ending up in a ditch or anything. [HANG

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A Kid-Safe Christmas Tree With Paint Chips & Ribbons

That she blows! Or maybe I should I say “thar she glows!” Either way, we got ‘er up. And this year the theme was: free stuff we already had (no getting in the car to go fetch anything, since we feared that would cost us another week to get things up) nothing pointy/hard/breakable (for bean safety reasons) color, color, color (just like our tabletop tree in the living room) So yes, we gave our full-sized tree a whole new look (see what it looked like in 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007 here) using stuff that we already had in the house, like a bunch of leftover paint chips from my bin. Yes, I save old

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Our Favorite DIY Tools

Here it is, the much requested post about our favorite DIY tools for all of you folks who are asking Santa for something tool-ish this year (or trying to figure out what to buy a handy guy or gal in your life). None of the items in this list paid us or perked us for the mentions, they’re just actually the tools that we use and love on the regular. So without further ado, let’s chat about the things that help us get ‘er done…. We previously wrote this post about a few things that we pretty much can’t live without (any of which would make great gifts/stocking stuffers), so here’s a quick summary since

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