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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Updating A Thrift Store Doll’s Cradle

Psst- We’re still at work on the living room (you got a preview of that mess project here) so we’ll be back with those details on Monday (barring any unforeseen catastrophes).  Woot, it’s Friday y’all. I’ll pause while you celebrate with a desk/cubicle/subway/couch dance. Speaking of rejoicing, for every time that we share heavier DIY related projects (laying a stone patio, building a deck, renovating our kitchen, or even adding board & batten) there are always a ton of little updates that we tackle – sometimes for less than $5 in under 5 minutes. Which explains why our Projects page is full of those things too (you know we love a smorgasbord). So after sharing

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Store Crashing: Gelati Celesti

We’ve only store crashed a few times (like this cute local kids consignment shop or this office crashing from Charlotte) but when a local ice cream store called Gelati Celesti opened up in our neighborhood, not only was the ice cream pretty darn good, so was the design. In fact, we actually thought a lot of it could translate into someone’s home (so it’s not just a “commercial” look that you can’t implement in your own kitchen). Let’s have a look around on this fine Wednesday afternoon, shall we? When you walk in the awesome black-framed doors surrounded by black-framed windows and look to the left, there’s a rustic whitewashed plank wall with a prep

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Tips For Mixing Prints And Patterns

Q: I really love Clara’s room! Great color choices. Do you have a formula for mixing prints? I love how they are all so different – even the colors and yet they all compliment each other and totally make the room! For my boys room, I am mixing prints but find it gets very busy looking or I tend to go with the same color making it kind of boring looking.  – Cappy A: It’s funny that this comment came in about a day after I ran around Clara’s room photographing a bunch of the patterns going on in there in the hopes of making a little grid to show how we mixed & matched

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Our 32 Favorite Home Paint Colors

Alternate punny post title: Gimme Some Moore. Yes, that was a Busta Rhymes reference. Dude, that song was my junior year jam. And speaking of jams, our new nail gun is our latest. John’s totally ready to get his crown molding install on this weekend, assuming he can wrestle it out of my hands. Just gotta let these guys acclimate a little bit longer… So while the crown molding gets to know our house a little better (and I dreamily gaze at it while whispering sweet nothings) we’re excited to share our 2013 Benjamin Moore paint picks! We’re a little tardy for the party with this – and a big thanks to everyone who has

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We’re About To Tackle Board & Batten, Baby!

It’s Wednesday the 27th… so it’s time to share this season’s (completely unofficial) Pinterest Challenge project (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie to make us stop pinning and start doing). Huzzah! And this season’s challenge was the biggest one we’ve tackled by far. We tried our hand at adding some character with some easy board & batten in our formerly bare hallway. Which now, a week later, is looking like this. Woot! Is it weird that I’ve been sitting on the floor just staring at it? A few folks who had already installed board & batten or wainscoting commented last week to say that pictures don’t do it justice

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Listy McListerson: Updated

Warning: this is longer than the Oscars, so feel free to fast forward to the good parts. These posts actually came about when people asked how we organize all the stuff we have on our to-do list. We explained that we basically just have one long run-on document, and when folks kept asking us to share it (and update it as we went along), it sounded like our idea of a good time. And it’s high time that we actually updated it considering it has been ten months since we last shared it! Yowsa. In an attempt to keep our eyes from crossing when we read it, we separated what we’ve done in each room

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Finishing Touches In The Playroom

Mwah, hah, hah. Picture me laughing like a cartoon villain while rubbing my hands together maniacally. That’s sort of how I feel when I get to the “finishing touches” part of a room. Home stretch bay-bay! Remember how the middle makes no sense? Well, this weekend I think we rounded a corner thanks to a few small tie-things-together updates (you know, between all the board & batten we’re furiously installing/caulking/painting for Wednesday’s big reveal). So let’s take a look-see, shall we? As you can see, we finally got a new sheet set for the daybed (just a basic navy blue 100% cotton set from Target for a twin bed) to replace the worn and faded

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Squeezing In Some Craftiness

Since we always share our road trip adventures with the Bowers (like this one, this one, and this one), here’s a long overdue recap of our most recent visit – which included lots of kid fun, a fair amount of antiquing & crafting, and even a little luxurious mom outing for good measure (along with a really cute gift idea). Let’s jump right in, shall we? Oh but for those looking for pictures of us doing sexy exciting things like cutting wood and using a nail-gun, that’s going on as you read this. The soundtrack of the day is bam-bam-bam! Yes, we’ve begun our big board & batten project and can’t wait to share our

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A Kids Closet With Some Play Space In It

The closet in the spare room used to be packed with things like luggage, wrapping paper, gift bags, and a bunch of other clutter that had to be dealt with in order to free up space for actual playing and Clara-storage (since this is now the playroom/big girl room instead of a room full o’ junk). So we took everything out (except for the photo albums & yearbooks up top) and it magically disappeared. Just kidding, it ended up in the guest room closet. Which actually seems ok since we’re on year three of living here (CRAZY!) and we haven’t noticed any guests using the guest closet at all, so it made sense for us

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Knock Knock… Who’s There?…

It’s high time for the winter Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie Bower to make us stop pinning and start doing). The whole Pinterest Challenge thing started around a year and a half ago when Katie called me to say that she thought we should challenge ourselves to make one thing each season that’s inspired by all the fun stuff that we’ve pinned (and call it… wait for it… The Pinterest Challenge). It’s a welcome slap of stop-pinning-and-start-doing. So slip into your Hoodie Pillow (please tell me you’ve seen that on Shark Tank), sip on some hot chai, and grab some supplies. It’s time to get this DIY

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Framing Kid Clothing And Adding A Few Fun Wall Hooks

This adorable handmade poncho was actually brought back from Peru by my amazing sister-in-law a few years ago (thanks Ali!), and I was literally counting down the days until Clara was big enough to wear it. She has gotten a ton of use out of it over the last few years and it even made it onto the cover of a local mag (it was perfect for the holiday colors they were going for). But alas, Clara’s a growing bean, so it’s a little on the small size these days. Which would ordinarily make me want to cry, but I’ve been planning Phase 2 (aka: Operation Keep This Poncho Forever) for a while. $herdog had

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Hanging Decorative Birdcages In A Kids Room

Put a birdcage on it. That’s right, why stop at putting a bird on something when you can put an entire birdcage on it? Follow up question: why stop at one when you can go with three? Sidenote: we’ve gotten a few questions about the brown sheet on the daybed, so the deal with that is that we still haven’t picked up sheets for the bed, but they’ll most likely be navy and most definitely won’t be that crazy old tan sheet that has been on this daybed for around six years! Haha. So just try to ignore that for now if you can. But back to the birdcages. I’ve been itching to hang these

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