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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Finding An Affordable Sleeper Sofa

After recently revealing that John would be coming on as a full time blogger here on the home front (and mentioning that we had a full scale guest bedroom to office-slash-guest-bedroom-slash-playroom makeover in the cards) we’re back to spill more details about that space’s big switcheroo. Spoiler alert: we need a sleeper sofa, STAT. Let’s take a look back – waaaaay back – at what the room looked like when we moved in. It was actually a pretty blank slate to begin with, so replacing the ceiling fan with a flush mount fixture (like this- basic and cheap, but still an improvement) seemed to raise the ceiling about a foot. Then we just painted the

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How To Sand Down A Door So It Stops Sticking

Ever been trapped in the bathroom? We were. All the time. Every spring and summer, thanks to a bit of increased humidity, our full bathroom’s door used to swell just enough in the top left corner to keep the door from opening on the first pull. Or the second. Or the third. In fact it usually took some serious “door flapping” (grabbing the knob and rocking back and forth until it sprung free on the fifth or sixth tug) to get out of the bathroom every time we used it. And forget about our poor friends and family members who innocently ducked in there and then freaked out about a minute later when they thought

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Some Great Money Saving “Dad Advice”

John’s dad’s nickname is El Cheapo and he truly is one of our money management role models. It’s not like he wears shoes with holes in them or lives without creature comforts- he just saves for what is truly important to him (like a family-sized vehicle and even a vacation home for us to gather) and forgoes things that don’t mean as much to him (like fancy meals on the town and a room-sized flat screen TV). Of course deciding what matters to you and being frugal in other areas is truly a personal decision (so if a flat screen TV will give you more joy than a minivan you should certainly follow your heart

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Adding A New Runner And Molding To Stairs

When Rhoda sent her amazing DIY staircase makeover we had to share the goods. Here’s her letter: I wanted to pass along photos of my latest project, since y’all are such DIY loving people. I hated the carpet on our downstairs set of steps, so I ripped all the carpet up. Oooops, you can see from the pics what I had to work with… and these stairs were never meant to be shown to the public.  But, I slowly transformed them by adding TONS of molding (I just used my hand miter box and lots of paint- including porch and floor paint for the stair treads). Then I added a natural jute runner down the

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A Lovely & Light House Tour

We’re back with another House Crashing adventure, and this one happened right here in Richmond. This charming Westover Hills house was just too pretty to pass up, so when Lori and her husband Greg invited us inside to poke around we knew we had to bring our camera and snap some photos for you guys as well. And here’s the cute couple now… Lori’s actually expecting a wee one in August, but although the whole nesting thing hasn’t quite kicked in just yet, her house was spotless none the less. Here’s the view as soon as you step into the front door. Gorgeous and sundrenched would be exactly how we can describe their entire house.

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How About A Baby Announcement?

Just thought we should mention that we recently welcomed a new member of the family. On Friday the 14th at 5:57pm, Clara Kenley Petersik was born with a paint brush in her hand weighing in at 7 lbs 10 oz and measuring 20.5 inches long. We’re insanely in love with her. And she and Burger are already best buddies. Seriously, he thinks it’s his job to stand guard next to her at all times. Clara was named after John’s grandmother on his dad’s side. And her middle name, Kenley, is an homage to my dad (Ken) with John’s mom’s maiden name worked in there (Kelley) along with a reference to my great aunt on my

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Our Edible Garden A Year Later

Last year was our very first year spent playing farmer. Perhaps I should rephrase that. Last year we enthusiastically planted some herbs, veggies, and fruits in a small backyard garden that we created just for that purpose. Farmer might be a bit of a stretch, but for two not-always-great-with-plants people, it was quite a lofty goal… and it worked! Now that spring is back in full bloom (and the local farmer’s market is finally open again) we were able to replant a ton of new stuff and some old favorites too. You can read about how we originally prepped and planted our edible garden right here (tip: we used some non-edible evergreen shrubs to fill

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Window Shopping At HomeGoods

By now you guys have probably grown accustomed to our random tours through places like Target, Ikea, Crate & Barrel and Anthropologie with our camera in tow. But this time we traipsed through HomeGoods and couldn’t stop ourselves from snapping pictures of all the things that we loved (with fabulous prices to match). So without further ado, here’s what’s frying our bacon these days from the decor mecca that is HomeGoods… This amazing white cut-out urn is nothing short of art when it’s placed in the center of a large dining table or displayed on a console table or buffet. And although we’ve seen them in a few places for upwards of $100-150, this baby

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Eight Things We Did To Prepare For Our Baby’s Arrival

With just seven days until my actual due date (although we’re pretty sure Baby P will make us wait even longer), we’ve officially begun getting ready for her arrival. Of course you’ve seen us tackling her nursery, but now when we say getting ready, we really mean getting-ready-for-my-water-to-break-and-to-actually-welcome-our-new-daughter-into-the-world. See, pretty much right after we found out I was pregnant we slowly began to wrap our minds around the idea that our family would be growing as my belly continued to expand with every baked potato and chocolate milk craving. Now you see why I’ve been humming my tweak on an old Beyoncé classic: “I don’t think you’re ready for this belly.” And only quite recently

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Organizing Old Photos In Numbered Albums

Maybe it’s the whole organize-everything-because-it’s-spring thing or even a bit of last minute nesting, but lately I’ve been all about whipping things into submission. As in, finding a place for every last paperclip and utensil… even putting every single one of our photos into coordinated leather albums and chronologically numbering them. Yeah, it’s a little crazy but I’ve always been a nerd for organization. And looking at those nice little hand-numbered tags just makes me smile. It’s the little things, right? The first stage of the project was to go through all my mismatched old falling-apart albums (and stacks of sad album-less photos) and put them all in chronological order. Then I grabbed some nice-enough-but-not-bank-breaking

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Budget Blooms: May Madness

As most of you know, every month we like to enjoy one inexpensive- and sometimes free- bouquet to keep things feeling fresh around here (the idea actually stemmed from a super sweet Christmas present from the hubs a while back). But this month we got lucky. Nope, not with a free backyard bouquet, but with the photo shoot that we mentioned this morning… which involved a cooler full of flowers provided by the prop stylist, many of which weren’t even touched when the cameras were being packed away. And what did that ever-amazing prop stylist do? She offered all the floral outcasts to us as she left. Did I mention said prop stylist happens to

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Behind The Scenes: Our Friday Photo Shoot

We’re back to share the “backstage” details of our recent photo shoot with the crew from BHG for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers (with our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom playing the stars of the show). Let’s just say it was a day full of prepping, propping, shooting, eating, secretly high fiving when no one was looking (ok, that was just me and John), and standing around staring as the masters worked their magic (again, that was just me and John). And we had a lot to stare at. There were large panels of fabric to soften any outside light, big worth-more-than-our-house camera lenses, and computers hooked up

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