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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Ripping Up A Rug & Removing The Rug Pad & Tack Strips

We named the rug in the sunroom Stinky. We were feeling literal, and it was damp in the corners from moisture seeping into the sunroom from bad seals in the old sliders and some wood rot. The previous owners knew there was a moisture issue (along with a serious smell issue) in there, which definitely came into play when they set the low-enough-to-be-in-our-range listing price, so although this rug sounds like a curse, we actually consider it to be a blessing (heck, if we can take care of something that might turn off other buyers and it helps us afford a house that we LOVE, we’re all about it). So here’s how we got that

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Replacing An Old Furnace & Getting A New Roof

When we bought our house, there were two big issues we knew that we needed to deal with right away: the ancient furnace for the first floor was so poorly maintained we weren’t sure it would run the 32 year old roof was at the end of it’s life and there was a hole in it (it was actively leaking into the attic every time it rained) Thankfully we knew about both of these issues when we bid on the house, and we were able to negotiate thousands of dollars back at closing to go towards those updates (since a new roof and a new furnace are hardly cheap fixes). Then it was just a

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How To Remove An Old Sliding Shower Door

Don’t eat while you read this. Seriously, don’t. This is the story of removing the sliding shower doors in our bathroom. It was one of those can’t-do-this-soon-enough tasks that was at the top of our list. Not only did they enclose the tub in a way that a soft white fabric curtain wouldn’t, they had seen better days. So there were lines of rust around them… … and pretty impressive amounts of caulk that seemed to be holding them together. Plus their height was oddly low, so John hit his head (not once but twice) while climbing in. Fool him once, shame on the shower doors – fool him twice, shame on John. Here’s a

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How To Add Some Office Organization

Our office looked like this when we first laid eyes on the house. Then it looked like this on moving day.  And here’s what it looks like about a week and a half into living here. On one hand, it doesn’t look THAT crazy. I mean there could be a llama standing in the middle of the rug eating popcorn. But on the other hand, this room has a LONG way to go before it’s functional for two working adults (yup, we currently only have one desk going on). And the whole all-furniture-against-the-wall-with-a-little-round-rug-in-the-middle thing is a little weird. As for what we’re envisioning down the line, we’d love to have some sort of double desk

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Our House Hunting Must-Have List

Since we shared our house wish list back in the fall of 2010, we wanted to document what was on the list now (I just found it scrunched up in a vase that was sitting on the bedroom floor, naturally). It’s actually the same list  – we just scribbled things out as they changed and added new things as time passed (even when we weren’t house hunting, if we thought of something for our “someday house” we jotted it down whenever we came across the list). Not surprisingly, many things were the same – although it does seem that after 7 years of home-ownership our nice-to-have list grew a lot (I guess since we keep

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Fourteen New Interior Door Knob Options

Right before we installed the hardwood floors upstairs, we mentioned how we sprayed all of the blue trim and doors upstairs here… … but they’re now naked when it comes to knobs. We’re no strangers to ORBing things like we did here, but a lot of the doors here were rusted and pitted and some were even jammed/didn’t turn/didn’t lock. So in this case, it really makes sense for us to replace them with something befitting of our freshly painted six panel doors. On one hand, it was a bummer to have to shell out loot for new knobs, but on the other hand the doors are in awesome shape and look like new with

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Furnishing Our Living Room With Our Ikea Sofa

So… the living room. First it looked like this: Then it looked like this: Then it looked like this: And now it looks like this: Although the salmon pink walls, orange-brown bricks, and all of that dark wood trim & paneling is a far cry from our vision for this room down the line (we keep changing our minds, but today we’re dreaming of something like this for the brick, coffered ceilings like this, and this for the paneling someday) it definitely feels a lot homier already. You know, with a couch to sit on instead of a pile of non-sit-on-able furniture. Oh and we shared this picture on Instagram/FB a few nights back, but

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Our Last Day In Our Second House

We love being able to look back at the empty photos of our first house, because while they’re definitely bittersweet, it’s so much fun to reminisce. They’re a great reminder that a house is only a house, and it’s the moments that you’ve shared with the people (and the chihuahuas) that you love that really make it a home. So we wasted no time snapping empty photos of our second house. And although I thought “without furniture all these rooms will pretty much look the same” the funny thing is that none of them do. So it’s nice to know that we left our mark on this sweet home of ours. Here’s the dining room/office

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Other Houses We Looked At Before Buying Our New One

Back when we were house hunting in 2010 we shared a series of posts that each profiled a different house that we looked at (you can see them here, here, here, here, and here). And even though our hunt is over this time around, we wanted to revisit 9 other houses that we casually toured (many of them just on Open House days) before we met The One. So we had fun driving around snapping pictures for you and reminiscing (“That was the one with the phone in the bathroom!” “That was the one with the family of deer in the backyard!”). The Lake House: The first house was very modest in size and located

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The First Day In Our Third House

We love being able to look back on Day One at our previous house (as clammy as the photos make us) – so we took a second to walk around our new house on Day One (in this case, the day all of our big furniture finally got moved over) and snapped these lovely photos. What do you guys think? Gorgeous, no? Our work here is done. The living room: The kitchen: Other side of the kitchen: The office: The dining room: The guest room: The hall bathroom: The spare room: Clara’s room (here’s us frantically trying to get it ready so she had a place that felt like home – and a place to

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What We Did To Sell Our House Faster By Owner

Ok, so today our house looks like this. So – spontaneous decision! – while we get settled and find our underwear, this week is going to be moving week! Turns out you guys still wanted to hear a whole lot about the sale of our current house. So let’s do the dang thing. Here’s what we plan to cover in honor of Spontaneous Moving Week: How we staged/sold our house (including a glance at our real estate flyer, a list of what we changed before showings, etc) What we made when we sold our house vs. what we put in- budget breakdown included! Empty house pics (dude, it’s trippy to see your house all echoey

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