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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A Foyer Makeover With New Lighting & Furniture

Come on in and let’s have a walkabout. But not one of those wildlife walkabouts, just a jaunt around the foyer since we haven’t properly introduced you to many of the updates in here. I’d describe this room’s evolution over the last year or so as just generally lightening things up (thanks to switching out an old dark foyer table and the dark slate floor) and layering in some more tone-on-tone texture (in the new light fixture, mirror, and woven baskets). So let’s break it down with a whole bunch of pics, shall we? Safari hat: optional. Actually just for fun, here’s a before shot from a similar angle: And back to the after again.

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The Beach House Has Furniture!

If you guys follow us on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve already heard the news: not only does the beach house officially have furniture (!!!) we finally got the spend the night there this past weekend! Two nights, in fact! It’s still a far cry from “done.” There’s a lot of remaining furniture that we need to get (nightstands, dressers, headboards, a top for our coffee table, etc) along with various other decor stuff that’s missing (rugs! art! lamps!). Not to mention some bigger tasks like installing the kitchen, adding built-in bunk beds upstairs, and constructing bench seating in the breakfast nook. But even so, just having some furniture (a couch! beds to sleep on!) and

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Three Quick Front Porch Updates

Beach house stuff is flying along, and we owe you guys a giant post (in the meantime you can see some pics on Instagram and Facebook) but we have some breaking porch news, which is that it no longer looks neglected and abandoned. Plus I got a little “creative” with the bushes so they’ll never die on me again. I don’t have a great “before” photo because it wasn’t something I ever thought to capture for posterity, but think dirty old doormat, dead plants, discolored brick, and spiderwebs (but not of the Halloween-decoration variety). One thing that tipped us off to the problem was taking our annual First Day of School photos out in front

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Refinishing Heart Pine Floors: Before & After

You might think I’m being dramatic. Me? Dramatic? Yes. But in this case, no. Our freshly refinished heart pine floors are complete game changers in the house-feeling-more-finished column. FO SHO. I mean, look at this shot of the kitchen that we snapped when we were there this past Saturday checking them out / doing alllll the drooling: Just as a reminder, here’s what that room looked like a few months ago, right after drywall went up: And let’s take it waaaay back for a second. Here’s what this room looked like when we bought the house last October. In the words of Pepe Le Pew: “Le Yikes.”  So this visit was full of bulging eyes and

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How To Refinish An Old Clawfoot Tub

We were determined to refinish the old, stained clawfoot tub in our beach house bathroom. Having it professionally reglazed or refinished seemed daunting (it’s heavy!) so we were determined to make this a DIY project. Luckily, it was surprisingly easy to do ourselves and only cost us about $50 and a fair amount of free elbow grease. So let’s just dive right into what worked (and what didn’t) and how we nursed this baby back to life. Finding An Old Tub We were fortunate that this tub came with the beach house when we bought it, although its condition clearly left something to be desired. The room was literally falling apart around it and we

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The Best Green Household Cleaners And Personal Care Products

Since sharing this round-up back in 2009 and this one from 2012, we’ve been getting quite a few requests for an updated breakdown of the household cleaners and personal care products we’re using to keep our home (and bodies!) clean these days. And I always get a bunch of questions about my skin routine. We do our best to keep our collections of soaps and cleaners pretty simple and streamlined (including my makeup, which all fits into a bag the size of a pencil case) because less stuff = more money, more time, and more space. So if you’re looking for a few ideas on what you might be able to cut out or simplify, hopefully this

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Labor Day Furniture & Home Decor Sales!

I’m doing that thing where I tell myself I’m writing a post to help you guys find all the best deals but really I’m adding a million things to my own cart and whispering “I should just click buy because everything is such a good deal right now!” So whether this post is truly for me or for you (debatable – can’t we just say BOTH?!), here’s what I’ve found so far: Target has a lot of things that are up to 30% off with an extra 15% off at checkout with the code LABORDAY. These arm chairs at Target are so well rated and look awesome in every room I’ve seen them in (like this

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White And Blue Hex Tile Installed At The Beach House

We had another progress-filled week at the beach house thanks to clocking over 40 hours of tiling across four days to finally finish all of the tile (well, almost all of the tile). Just like last week’s super-sized post on trim, doors, and tile, we made a video to show you guys all the good stuff that’s happening over there – including two other not-tile-related milestones. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might have to click through to the post to see the player.  We tiled the floors and shower pans by zooming in and out for two 2-day trips and tackling them together, but we knew knocking out EIGHT shower walls would

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Kids Room Ideas From The Cutest Kids Bookstore Ever

When we were visiting the Bowers this weekend, we shared some fleeting photos of a super adorable kids bookstore on Instagram stories. Then we got a barrage of messages and comments to the tune of: PLEASE DO A POST ABOUT THIS STORE SO IT WON’T BE GONE IN 24 HOURS! So here we are, with those photos (and some more we didn’t share on IG) for anyone who’s looking for some fun kids room ideas. Or adult room ideas. We all LOVED this place so much. It’s in Monroe, Georgia and it’s called The Story Shop – and it’s the cutest bookstore we’ve ever seen. You think I’m exaggerating with that description but in the words of

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The Beach House Has Drywall And It’s Glorious

This has been a LOOOOOONG TIME COMING, and we couldn’t be more excited: our beach house has walls again! When we first “met” our house the original crumbling plaster was full of mold and termite damage, so it has taken over eight solid months to rebuild this baby from the studs up, including adding new electrical, plumbing, an updated HVAC system, and even tearing off a side of the house to rebuild it from scratch. So this stage may not look like much, but it feels enormously momentous to us. I’ll toss in a few before photos as a refresher. You can see the whole house’s “before” state here and the fully torn apart/demo stage here, like the shot below.

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Adding A Little Wooden Playhouse

Yup, we’re following the blogger trend that seems to be sweeping the internets: our kiddos officially have a playhouse. It was actually a gift from my mom for their joint birthdays back in the spring (yes, our 7-year-old and 3-year-old both agreed on precisely one thing, and it was that they wanted a little outdoor house to call their own). “No grown-ups allowed” was actually uttered during the request. So we looked around for one we thought they’d both like that wouldn’t break Nonna’s budget. We came across this cute playhouse that was made of solid cedar, was the right price, and even had little flower pot holders out front. So we sent my mom the link, enjoyed

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Our Patriotic Front Porch + Front Yard Planning

Just dropping in with a quick little patriotic update out front and some future yard plans. We’re no strangers to decorating in reds, whites, and blues outside, and the good news is that the back of our house isn’t having all the fun anymore. That’s right, the purchase of a $25 flag has me grinning every time we come home to it (and it only took us two tries to get it right – ha!). The funny thing is that when we moved into our house there was an old flag holder in a similar spot… but we were about to repaint everything from cream to white so we removed it. And then, well, the house

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