Young House Love

Home Decorating, DIY Tutorials, & Shenanigans

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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Refinishing Pine Floors For A Light, Beachy Look

Alternate title: putting the floor in Florida. I’ll pause while you slap your knee. I’m telling you, I’ve got mom jokes for days. And speaking of days, I googled this topic for days on end. And let me tell you, finding someone who shared actual photos and an exact rundown of what floor products they used on pine floors to get the result we were aiming for was BLEAK. We were looking for a soft and light end result (not darker or more amber-toned/yellowed, which seems to be what pine likes to do, especially if it’s sealed with regular old oil based sealer – even just the clear stuff yellows it significantly). Oak floor refinishing

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The Outside Of Our Florida House: Before & Now!

You guys. I am very excited about this post. And John’s computer froze and crashed two times this morning while we were trying to work on this, and my enthusiasm STILL ENDURES, which is a good indication of just how into this I am. I’m going to try to let the pics do all the talking because I just want to get this post UP AND INTO THE WORLD! So without further ado, here is what our house looked like back in February when we offered on it. Remember it was a super rainy/overcast span of two days when we checked it out (as is our tradition of buying houses – more on that here).

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Two Final House Tour Videos Pre & Post Packing

Ok, this post won’t need a lot of words (famous last words from this Chatty Cathy) because the two videos in this post will do a lot of the work for us. You can just click play below to see a final “after tour” of our house, as it looked right before our real estate showings in early March (you can hear more about how those went here in this podcast episode – it was pretty crazy!). And if you have questions about paint colors or where we got something that you saw (furniture items, accessories, blinds, rugs, etc) they’re all sourced right here in this post for you. Note: You can also view this

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A (Before) Tour Of Our Florida House!

Eiiiiiiiiiiii! That’s my excited dolphin sound. I do an IMPRESSIVE impression when I’m extra hyped (according to my kids). Anyway, I’m BEYOND excited to take you on a little tour of our new house in Florida, as it looked when we first laid eyes on it back in February. As luck would have it, that was also the last time we laid eyes on it in person (thanks to our spring break trip being cancelled due to staying hunkered down at home). So it feels like a ton has changed since we were in it a few months ago – both from a global standpoint (worldwide pandemic), and also from a reno standpoint (since we

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Our Florida House Inspiration Pictures

As promised, I’m sharing a ton of photos that are inspiring us the most when it comes to our new house in Florida. My alternate title for this post was BEACHY VIBES 4 DAYZ because I feel like we have been preparing for this moment for our entire adult lives. Ha! So many of you have been saying things like “Your art! It has been a sign forever that you were meant to live by the beach!” (for example there’s this anniversary painting and these aerial beach photos and about 843 more examples since I’m actively packing all of our art). Meanwhile others have been like “even your first house with light blue & sand-colored

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How We Cleaned A Dingy Secondhand Rug

Pretty much every vintage runner we own is one that we have ordered online, never having seen them in person. Generally, we’ve had great luck. But it’s always kind of a gamble because you can’t fully trust a photo to show you what something truly looks like in person (especially under the specific lighting conditions of your space versus theirs – plus your computer monitor’s brightness can alter things too, etc). It might arrive and look darker in person. It may be a bit more worn when you actually lay eyes on it. The colors may be a smidge yellower or grayer or whatever. But as long as you understand that up front and are

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A Surprisingly Quick And Demo Free Hall Bathroom Makeover

This bathroom came together in such a short period of time, we almost can’t believe it ourselves (and we witnessed it with our own four eyeballs). If we hadn’t watched it fly along ourselves, while everything just seemed to line up perfectly, we probably wouldn’t have thought it was possible – especially after the longest-bathroom-reno-of-our-lives that we started way back in October. (Yes it’s still going, but next week we’ll have a full reveal & budget breakdown! FINALLY!). Meanwhile, in less than a week, this upstairs hall bathroom went from looking the way that it has looked for years (old painted double vanity, two yellow-beige sea-shell shaped sinks, bare white walls, old seams in need

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How We Organized The Beach House Kitchen

Someone asked me the other day for details on how we organized the beach house kitchen, which is something we photographed and filmed this summer to share with you guys, and when I went to send them the link to this post, I realized that we never actually wrote it! So yes, these pictures sat on the camera for months as my tan faded, along with memories of warm days spent with my toes in the sand (current status: toes in my Ugg slippers because it’s freezing!). Years ago you guys liked having a look inside of our Richmond kitchen cabinets, so John and I had some fun snapping lots of organizing photos for this

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A Beach House Middle Bedroom Update: It’s DONE!

BEHOLD! The new & improved middle bedroom at the beach house (*crowd goes wild, people do The Hype, battle rap horns sound, DJ Khaled shouts “DJ KAHLEDDDDD”, maybe Cardi B. is there with one of those t-shirt cannons?*). I hope you enjoyed that mental image as much as I did. ANYWAY, the beach house middle bedroom update is done, and I can’t get over how sweet the board & batten and the wallpaper look together – especially with the old heart pine floors and doors. Those are 115 years old, and the wallpaper and the wall treatment are brand new, but they feel so good together – especially in person. My biggest pet peeve with

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Our Big Ikea Closet Makeover – Budget & Video Tour

This post is going to cover a lot of ground. Not only are we sharing before & after photos and a video tour about how we organized it all, we’re also spilling how much the whole thing cost, tossing out some closet planning tips to help you tackle an update yourself, and the details on how we made it all look built-in like a bonafide custom closet (with just $65 of wood!). First let’s get to the eyeball-related things: the before & afters. Also, please note how badly Burger wanted to be in this post. Photobombs out the wazoo. This little room of ours has come a long way. The photo below shows how we

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A Big Bathroom & Closet Update

We made some pretty exciting progress over the last few weeks that has earned us a much more functional space with a random but doable smattering of tasks left on our to-do list. We’re definitely rounding third base on this bathroom (that sounds weird, but you know what I mean – we’re getting extremely close to the end) and for that I’m straight up Carlton-dancing. Let me tell you, having a double sink for the first time in our lives (and my favorite toilet! and an actual closet system instead of a few old hanging bars!) is a huge upgrade. We’re thrilled, even if this feels like it has been a much longer renovation than

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Painting Our Shed & Adding Window Boxes

This post is for everyone who has been asking for a shed update since we finally painted it to match our white house (it only took us a year!). While we were updating things, we switched out the lights and added window boxes because I can now be described as “extremely passionate about sheds.” Like if I was on match.com that would be in my bio somewhere. This is perhaps the largest personality change for me throughout adulthood. The idea that I like sheds is an extremely new revelation. Remember when I didn’t care about sheds – and maybe even hated them – especially when John wanted to use half of our beach house’s tiny

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