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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Thank You

We have about a million things to be thankful for, and you guys are at the top of our list. Thanks for caring to drop in and see what’s going on at our house. Much Turkey Day love coming atcha. Especially from Burger. He always looks so dapper in a photoshopped pilgrim hat. Now go stuff your face and stop messing around on the computer. The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to be unable to button your pants by the day’s end. We’re already hard at work on that over here… Psst- We just announced this week’s lucky giveaway winner. Click here to see if it’s you (and to snag a sweet discount even

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Making A List Of All The Things We’ll Miss From Our First Home

In the words of Rose from Titanic…..I’ll never let go. We’re both going to miss so many things about our first casa that we just had to dedicate a post to those little details that bring a smile to our faces. We don’t want to forget a thing. 1. The gorgeous cherry tree in the front yard. 2. The new kitchen (which was totally worth 113 days of eating-out-and-living-without-a-sink chaos). 3. Our view of the amazingly lush and private backyard (which was actually one of the main reasons we bought our house back in 2006) 4. The sweet front porch where we’d sit and watch the world neighbors go by. 5. The layers of paint

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Our Green, Pink, And Silver Christmas Tree

Yes, we’re those people. I personally get irritated whenever stores skip holidays. For example, if I’m walking around Target and they have Christmas stuff out but it’s not even Thanksgiving. Not ready yet. Let me get through Turkey Day before you push your red & white santas and snowmen on me. But this year we did the unthinkable… … we set up our Christmas tree before Thanksgiving. I’m so sorry. Feel free to virtually slap us or break out an “oh no you di’int.” We’ve already warned our Thanksgiving guests, and thankfully they acted like it was some fun novelty. So we’ll be able to tell you firsthand if turkey and mashed potatoes taste less

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Our Thanksgiving Table Setting

At our house, we serve dinner buffet style (setting out all the food in the kitchen so people can pile their plates high) which means I get to have some fun with the table since it doesn’t have to accommodate a million platters and serving bowls. And I figure that even though Thanksgiving is typically a holiday full of orange, red, yellow, gold, and wheat tones when it comes to table decor, who says that’s the only way to do things? Methinks there’s more than one way to skin a cat cook a bird, so I had some fun with a rich green and blue palette thanks to some free wine bottles I’ve been working

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The Color Scheme For Our New House

We’re thinking of moving away from the soft, subtle, and beachy whole-house color scheme that we have going on here and towards something more moody, risky, and sophisticated at the new house. Here’s hoping it works for us (you never know… and we’re the first to admit that sometimes we end up repainting). We’re definitely no strangers to covering our mistakes with another coat or two of something new if we don’t like how things look when we step back and check things out (after sharing the “outtake” pics with you guys of course). So it might take us a few tries to settle on a scheme we love, but right now we’re considering something

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Trying To Figure Out How To Reupholster A Rocking Chair

We got this rocking chair for $25 thanks to craigslist, because we loved the simple shape and the low back and the rich chunky wood. Plus I’ve been dying to add a rocker to the new house’s living area (since I feed Clara all the time while hanging out in the public part of the house, as opposed to retreating to the nursery or the bedroom). Plus she loves rocking at John’s mom’s house, so we thought it would contribute to good quality time with the bean. But this rocker is obviously lacking a bit in the seat and back cushion area. No worries, we just figured we’ll reupholster it. Until we realized that we

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Fall Decorating Ideas

I got all leaf-happy to add a bit of that fall/Thanksgiving vibe to the dining area. It was free and it took about ten minutes total. Here’s the dining table with some pretty branches from the cherry tree out front: And I popped a few smaller branches from the same tree into my floating cb2 hanging vases. Sure, they’re looking a little limp, but after adding some water to the vases, they perked right up. And since they’re free I’m ok with them lasting just a week or so if that’s what mother nature so ordains. Oh and I thought a $2 bag of mixed nuts looked kinda Thanksgiving-ish (saw something similar in an old

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The Floor Plan Changes We’re Planning For Our New House

We’re still holding off on taking you on a full virtual tour of our soon-to-be new home (you know, until the deal is 100% done and we actually live there). But we thought we’d give you a sense of what we’re gonna be working with thanks to this rough floor plan that we threw together with the use of floorplanner.com (it’s a free service, btw). Everything is approximate since we’re borrowing from the measurements that we took during the inspection and copied from the sales flier, but here’s what we’ve got (the washer & dryer are stacked in the small mudroom off of the carport): *There aren’t measurements for the smaller spaces like the bathrooms

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John’s Bee-Day Gift

Yesterday was my sweet hubby’s birthday so I figured I should share what Clara, Burger and I got him. John and I have recently been talking about how we’d love to amass more “real art” to complement all the DIY stuff that we have framed on every wall. This goal is definitely inspired by our friends Matt and Kristin – who we House Crashed here and here. The cheerful original art that lights up their home always has us jonesing to add more color and fun to our walls. So consider this painting to be the beginning of an exciting little collection that will happily hang in the new house: It’s a 12 x 12″

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How We Got Rid Of 100+ Things!

Nothing lights a fire under your arse like making a public proclamation that you’re going to get rid of 100 things. So even though we’re not moving until mid-December, we made our way from room to room paring down every single thing that we don’t love/need/use. The mantra as we went? No mercy. Because nothing is worse than packing, moving, and unpacking things that aren’t worth the time they took to transport or the space they’re eating up in the new place. Here’s our getting-rid-of-it office pile: Then we tackled the kitchen (Clara helped): Here’s our outgoing kitchen pile (what you don’t see are a bunch of baskets and towels on the floor): And here’s

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Window Shopping At Garden Ridge

So many people have told me about the miracle that is Garden Ridge, but I’d never been to one. Until yesterday. Yes, one finally came back to Richmond (we heard a lot about the one that used to be out by the airport but it was gone by the time we moved here 4+ years ago). Anyway, here’s what I found on my maiden voyage to the big Costco-ish warehouse full o’ house, garden, and other random stuff. My first reaction was “man this place is huge” followed by “Teresa Guidice would like it here” (NJ Housewives reference anyone?) since there are oversized urns and stone columns a plenty. Klassy. Let’s just say it’s one

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Setting A Goal To Clear Out 100 Things Before We Move

I want to get rid of (via donations, craigslist, ebay, freecycle, etc) at least 100 things before moving day. On one hand the number sounds kinda high, but on the other hand, I know there are at least 100 things in our house that we never use, need, or should spend time and effort moving. And I actually plan to keep track, writing all 100 items down on a piece of paper in list form. Why? Because I’m weird like that. To kick things off  I went through my shoes (pun intended). Amazingly, I realized that I hadn’t worn a good amount of them since leaving NYC and moving to Richmond 4+ years ago. How

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