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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Wall Art For The Nursery

We finally hung stuff on the wall in the beanette’s room. Earth shattering right? Except it’s actually somewhat of a big deal considering we haven’t hung a single thing in the entire house except for a wreath on the back of the fireplace in the living room for Christmas. That’s right, for the last month we were card carrying picture hanging virgins in the new house. But now that we made about 34 holes (yes, I counted) in the walls of Clara’s room, our v-card is long gone. So we snapped some pics of the nursery now that it has a little more flava. The only real change from Clara’s room in our last house

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Using A Cloth Napkin For Color Scheme Inspiration

Please tell me you sung that title to the tune of the Brady Bunch? If not I’ll give you a minute to get to it. Now that we have that out of the way, I thought I’d share our inspiration command center when it comes to the new house. It’s this napkin that we scored on clearance from Crate & Barrel (which you might recognize from this post of yore). I kid you not. That napkin is like the Sue Sylvester of Casa Petersik when it comes to picking colors and pinning down that ever elusive whole-house-color-scheme. She’s loud. She’s totally in charge. And she’s fun to watch. Thankfully no bullhorn though. That wouldn’t go

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How To Paint A Mirror

The deed is done. Everyone on Team Paint The Mirror White (not to be confused with Team Edward, which I’m totally a member of) can rejoice. Our mirror above the sink went from this: To this: And I guess we should show how it originally looked when we moved in for the full before: But back to the white paint choice. After much thought (and a decent amount of flip-flopping) we decided to go with our first instinct and paint the mirror white to match the trim. It definitely looks integrated and a bit less heavy, so the nook is now a little less look-at-me-right-now distinct (which is a good thing since we’re trying to

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A Video Tour Of Our New House

So it’s been exactly a month since move-in day and it’s shameful to think that we haven’t shared a video tour of the place yet. We officially accept a virtual slap on the wrist. Or a noogie if you’re old school. But no indian burns. Gotta draw the line somewhere. Anyway, after unpacking, list making, nursery painting, door frosting, bi-fold removing, duvet ordering, bed-assembling, washer & dryer hunting, shelf removing, Christmas tree decorating, playing with ceramic animals built-in bookcase arranging, built-in bookcase painting, dealing with a plethora of mirrors (some in very odd places), bedroom painting, Christmas tree dismantling, and waiting for our new washer & dryer to arrive (update: they’re here! more details later!)

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What Could Have Been…

When we’re painting we talk about all sorts of weird things that we probably wouldn’t otherwise get around to. And while painting the bedroom we got to the topic of “names that our parents almost gave us.” Get this. My mom wanted to name me Gina. We would have been John & Gina. That made us titter. Not sure if it’s a had to be there thing though. Either way, John’s dad’s choice of names takes the cake. He wanted to name John… wait for it… Lars. Lars Petersik. How funny is that? If I had seen tall dirty blond John at work and asked a coworker “oh who’s that?” and heard them respond with

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Removing The Side Splash & Backsplash From Our Bathroom Sink

You might notice a theme when it comes to posts like this and this and this and this. Making this house feel like ours seems to be just as much about stripping things down and removing stuff as it is about adding new furnishings and wall colors. Just like the old matted carpets in the sunroom and the bathroom of our old house had to go (along with the crocheted duck curtains, the wallpaper, some small doorways, a few bi-fold doors, and the linen closet door) we’re all about working with what we have. Which could mean altering things a little bit to help them fit more within our aesthetic instead of just junking them

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How To Remove Wall Shelves And Patch & Spackle The Holes

Let’s talk about breathing room. One thing we learned from our last house was that we prefer to let rooms “breathe” a little. Which means resisting the urge to fill every corner and span of wall with furniture and plant stands and coat racks and storage baskets and everything else that you can stick in there to crowd the perimeter of a room. So after a bit of deliberation we decided that letting the previous shelf-riddled corner of the fireplace breathe was the best choice for us. I actually attacked them after only a few days of living here and realized I never shared the pics while writing my list post– so here they are.

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Our West Elm Duvet Arrived

Remember the West Elm duvet cover that we ordered on sale last week? It’s here! Oh, I guess it would make more sense to show it in our space now: Of course we’ll be adding in some bolder accent pillows down the road, but we love it. It’s a smidge greener than we expected, but it actually reminds us of the bold blue-green color that we used to paint the back of our built-ins. We filled it with an über-cushy king sized Ikea comforter (we think it’s this one, but we’re not 100% sure since there are so many). And can I just say that we’re so glad we didn’t try to make do with

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How To Paint The Back Of Your Built In Bookcases

We’re back with the after pics of our freshly painted built-ins. As we mentioned in the last post, we went with an inky blue color with hints of green called Dragonfly from Benjamin Moore’s Affinity line (color matched to Lowe’s No-VOC Olympic paint for the bambino). We only needed a quart, and since we used objects that we already owned on the shelves this entire built-in makeover only ran us $10.97. You can read more about how we planned the shelf placement here. Oh and here’s a poorly lit progress pic from last night, just for fun. Yes John’s shirt does say “Talk Nerdy To Me” on the back. I love it. But here’s what

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Reducing Bookcase Clutter

We painted the back of our built-in bookcases last night! Which is totally our idea of a good time by the way. It’s the equivalent of a “Date Night” for us, if you will. So we figured we should post about the pre-planning process that went on so we can share the “after” pics as closely to real-time as possible (once the paint dries and we can put the shelves back up to snap some final photos for ya). So here you go: We decided we needed to roughly layout the objects on the built-in bookcases before painting the backs of them (we’ll explain more about that in a minute). We were planning to put

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Finding A Deal When Buying A Washer & Dryer

What the dealio, guys? Remember how we mentioned a few times that we’d like to upgrade to an energy efficient front loading washer and dryer sometime down the line when we saw a killer deal (we heard they pop up around February since new models are often introduced then)? Well, one found us a lot sooner than we expected. Yesterday actually. We were walking through Lowe’s on Saturday when we noticed a sign that said 10% off all appliances. Not much of a deal, but enough to make us take a detour through the appliance section for fun. And while we were in that shiny-new-appliance-induced-euphoria, we noticed a big sign on an energy efficient Whirlpool

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Twenty Eleven 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 Clara picture) here they are… Resolution #1. To be more bold with our decorating & renovating choices. We want to embrace color and contrast and just have fun without worrying that we’ll mess up. Mistakes are always when we learn the most about a project or our style, so we’re going to welcome them with open arms. And we hope to do our best to resist always going with the “safest” decisions in favor of taking a few chances and

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