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 Chalkboard Wall Calendar

You may remember Carla from back when we helped her transform her kitchen with some paint and a few simple switcheroos. So when she sent over her great little DIY chalkboard calendar project we had to share it. Here’s her letter: I had to pass along our latest update – we made a chalkboard wall calendar in our kitchen! We were inspired by none other than Master Crafter Martha Stewart and thought that her chalkboard wall calendar idea would look great in our home. To my surprise, it was fairly simple to do – all you need is black chalkboard paint, a few foam brushes, white paint (which we had plenty of from our kitchen

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Window Shopping: Charlotte Or Bust

We recently mentioned our trip to Charlotte, North Carolina when we explained how we DIYed a few faux sheepskin throws for our house. And now we’re back to share more of our road-tripping details. We dropped in on a slew of fun fabric and decor stores (and snapped photos of a ton of inspiring ideas as we went) so here’s a little virtual play by play of what we liked along the way. We already mentioned that we swung through Mary Jo’s Cloth Store, which is basically the biggest and most insane fabric store that we’ve ever seen. It’s actually a gigantic 32,000 square foot warehouse full of about a million bolts of fabric (we’re

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Creating A Spot To Sort Mail, Do Homework, Etc

When Lee sent over her Design Dilemma after pictures we couldn’t wait to share them. We know that many of you are chomping at the bit to see how our mood boards turn out (believe me, we are too) so we’re always thrilled to see how those spaces transform after some pretty major room makeover-ing. You may remember that we whipped up this custom mood board for Lee a while back when she came to us for help turning her hodge-podge of a room into a space to sort mail, do homework, and store a few things in a more appealing way. Since the room’s visible from a plethora of other adjoined spaces, it serves

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How To Line Drawers With Paper & Mod Podge

On Tuesday we shared how we refinished a Craigslist dresser for the nursery, taking it from this… … to this: So now we’re back with all the dirty drawer lining details as promised. This project actually only set us back around $1.30 because we already had everything on hand that we needed except for two foam craft brushes which we picked up at Michael’s for around sixty-five cents a pop. Our other already-owned project materials were Mod Podge and six sheets of wrapping paper (given to us by friends who founded this awesome local paper shop called Ink + Paper). And just for fun we selected three different patterns to use inside of our six

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Budget Blooms: Pretty In Pink

Remember when I shared my first of the year flowers a little while back (a sweet monthly gift from the hubs)? You may recall that they had a bit of New Year’s sparkle thanks to a cake stand full of gleaming silver ornaments for take one, and a few weeks later I remixed them with less of a holiday slant since we were well into January at that point. Well those inexpensive grocery store blooms lasted for pretty much all of January but then February got the best of us and before we knew it we were blinking our eyes and it was almost March- and we still hadn’t purchased any February flowers. So while

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How To Refinish A Veneer Dresser

Well, we recently took on the biggest nursery project to date and we lived to tell the tale. This post is a bit of a two-fer, since it not only details how to stain any wooden or veneered piece of furniture but also touches on how to paint anything that’s wood or veneer since we did a two-toned treatment on a dresser that we hunted down on the cheap. That’s right, we stained our “new” six drawer dresser with a deep rich brown tone and painted the top a crisp and glossy white color. Here’s how it all went down. First we had to search for something to add tons of storage space to our

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An Ikea Kitchen Makeover With Glass Tile

When Amanda and her husband Ken sent over the amazing before and after photos of their kitchen, let’s just say our mouths literally watered. Here’s their letter: I really enjoy your blog and your knitty-gritty do-it-yourself attitude, so I thought you might be interested in our own kitchen remodel. We live in a little brick house in St. Louis, built in the 1930’s. The kitchen had been redone in the 70’s and the cabinets were kinda shoddy- plus, we needed A LOT more storage. Last summer we took the plunge and decided to tackle it. My husband and I are both graphic designers and very particular about design but the room came together so smoothly,

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How To Make A Wine Cork Bulletin Board

When Emily emailed us with a great textural and natural DIY project we had to share the goods. Here’s her letter: I really REALLY enjoy reading your blog. I’m totally hooked on it- you have so many GREAT and accomplishable ideas. I’m constantly inspired by the things that you guys create and recently I completed one of my own DIY projects: a wine cork bulletin board. It was a simple project but really rewarding. You can check out the full story here on my blog, but I wanted to share the photos with you and let you know how inspiring you are to me everyday (from painting a wall to traveling around the country with

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Figuring Out A Whole-House Paint Palette

Paint can pretty much be chalked up to a learning experience around Casa Petersik. From painting all of our home’s trim with flat paint right after we moved in (baaad idea, use semi-gloss!) to picking a different color of the rainbow for each room (not the way to make a small house flow!) we’ve pretty much made every mistake in the book. And over the last almost-four years our walls have definitely “evolved” as we learned what we liked (and a whole lot of what we didn’t). We decided to use a handy little floor plan (created thanks to Floorplanner) to demonstrate three “stages” of our home’s ever changing color scheme to show that homes

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Making A Faux Sheepskin Rug (Part 2)

So we’re back with our second faux sheepskin DIY undertaking (after sharing the first one this morning). For this project we actually visited the biggest most insane fabric store that we’d ever seen while on a recent trip to Charlotte to visit some friends. It’s called Mary Jo’s Cloth Store and it’s basically a gigantic 32,000 square foot warehouse full of about a million bolts of fabric (we’re talking about a football-stadium-sized holy grail of textiles). And it’s located right outside of Charlotte (just off of 1-85 at exit 21). All I can say is that if they don’t have it there, nobody does. Plus their prices are fantastic. We saw designer prints marked down

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Making A Faux Sheepskin Rug (Part 1)

Ok, so you might think we’re crazy, but we always thought the sheepskin rugs that Ikea sold (especially the super cheap small sized ones that we always grab) were faux. Well, we recently had one of those duh moments when we noticed that the materials weren’t listed as acrylic or some other fabric and instead read: 100% sheepskin. Oops. We should have known- after all, they’re a Swedish company- but for some reason we always saw $99 sheepskin rugs and assumed those were the real ones and that the cheap $25 Ikea ones just had to be man made. Now we know the faux or real sheepskin decision is an extremely personal choice (just like

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The Upright Vacuum We Bought

We already talked about how much we love the Kurv (we’re not paid by them or otherwise perk’d in any way, we just truly love it) and now we’re even more excited because the day has finally come that we’ve discovered a full sized vacuum cleaner that we love just as much! Really, it sucks like a champ. And when we pair the carpet-friendly nature and the sheer power of our new addition with the super portable and wood-floor-friendly Kurv, the dust bunnies and tiny puppy hairs on our floors don’t stand a chance. Seriously, our house has never looked (or felt, because that’s important too) so clean. We realized we needed to replace our

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