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.

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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.

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

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

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Homework Room Makeover

Remember how I’m slowly slinking around my BFF’s house and eating all of the food in her fridge making over rooms for her? (You’ve seen her living room upgrade here). Well, I’m back with a sweet and simple homework room that we pulled together for her kids….juuuuust in time for school to be over for the year. #FlawlessTiming Thankfully they’ve already found that it’s pretty useful year round. Our goal was just to create a space that’s functional, not too spendy, and something that can grow with them (the kids are 2, 6, and 7). And since it’s right off the foyer, we wanted it to look nice since it’s one of the first things

[ Read More ]

| By | |

A Vintage Pink Stove For The Beach House

Oh snap, our “new” stove for the beach house is older than we are. In fact, it’s from 1959! And it’s pink! And I’m ridiculously excited about it. John’s current stove mood might best be described as “cautiously optimistic” – but we’ll get to that in a second. The cost? $195 at a secondhand shop. It’s a place called Class & Trash that’s around 30 mins from our house. When they posted the pink stove to their Facebook page (they share new items that come in each week) not only did some people tag me, but I noticed it in my own feed and my eyeballs did a happy dance. It was like the universe put blinking lights around this stove

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Two Easy Kids Birthday Parties: Into The Woods & Under The Sea

We’ve had so much fun putting together kids birthday parties with random themes like worms and dragons (complete with a fire-breathing kid photo session). Shortly after our last party post back in 2014 (remember the “Pink & Gold Everything Party“?), we took a step back from the blog for a full year, and in that time we were both curious: would our enthusiasm for going “all out” wane in the absence of an active blog? I mean, “all out” is probably a relative term. It wasn’t My Super Sweet Sixteen and there wasn’t a petting zoo, but we did our fair share of decorating and having fun with a theme and cupcake toppers and favors and all that

[ Read More ]

| By | |

Two Things I Bought (And A Whole Lotta Weekend Sales)

Happy Friday, guys! Just wanted to stop in with a public service sale announcement because as usual there are TONS of home items that are discounted for Memorial Day and since I’m now shopping for our house and the beach house (DANGER!) I’m on high alert for deals. I learned the hard way that it’s smart to hold out for this weekend when buying home stuff a few years ago (I ordered something like two days before all the sales hit without thinking: “duh, wait for Memorial Day and everything goes way on sale”). This year I actually had my act together not only to 1) remember that tip and buy two things I’ve been watching

[ Read More ]