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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How To Spray Paint Your Old Brass Door Knobs

You down with ORB? Yeah you know me. The deed has been done. After years (yes nearly two years!) of planning to upgrade every last old brass door knob in our entire house, we finally got ‘er done. Strike up the band! I can’t hear you. Can I at least get some cow bell? Yup, we removed 19 knobs with the intent of oil-rubbed bronzing (aka: ORBing) those babies. First we tried this method with a few exterior knobs, handles, and even a doorknocker a while back, just to see how they would hold up before doing the whole shebang (and I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t really have energy for the whole shebang up

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Book Projects By You (Over 300 DIY & Craft Projects!)

As soon as we decided to number all the tips in our book over two years ago we hoped to someday create an online component where folks could upload their take on any of the projects along with the project number. And that day has finally come! So not only will folks be able to access this page right here, we’ll also be linking to it directly from our book page – so if you’re ever bored and want to check out a ton of reader submitted projects that have been completed after checking out our book (which will just keep growing over time) this post should eventually be chock full of them! It’s sort

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How To Make An Ombre Gradient Christmas Tree

In the esteemed words of Snooki… the party’s here! Woop woop, the tree is up. And this year now that Clara’s a big girl who we think can handle real ornaments (well, we got a few shatter-proof ones for the very bottom just to be sure) we went with a gradient from white to hot pink to red. Booyah. Or as I’ve been saying way too often: boom goes the dynamite. Oh and we have a bunch of meaningful/special ornaments that we love the most, but we save those for our real mini tree (we got a tabletop one last year and loved it so much that it’ll be a tradition). So we’ll post about

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Five Random Bits

Since it’s Thursday afternoon and we’ve been known to veer off into random territory (like this, this, this, and this), I thought I’d toss another one on the barbie, er, blog. Below are things you probably never knew about me and John. Is it proof of our over-sharing tendencies? Yes. Evidence that we’re more than a little weird? Absolutely. But we just had so much fun with a Ten-Things-You-Didn’t-Know-About-Us post waaay back in 2009… … that we thought it was high time we broke out this post three years later. So without further ado, some random bits: 1. I’ve always wanted to name a band. Not be in one or marry a rockstar. Just name

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Sunroom Makeover Planning

Just like we did in our first house, we find ourselves bouncing around from project to project and from room to room (we’ve tackled the living room, guest room, nursery, bedroom, kitchen, dining room, office, laundry room, patio, deck, etc). But there are still a few completely untouched spaces after two whole years of living here (other than slowly filling them with clutter in some cases)! Up until about a month ago they were: the sunroom the playroom the hall bathroom the guest bathroom the basement the carport (which we want to convert to a more curb-appealing structure) the front porch (we want to frame out the columns, remove the scalloped trim, etc) Those are

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House Crashing: A Happy Casual Farm House

You guys know Lesli, right? She’s a friend of ours who lives in out in the country (Greenwood, Virginia) and happens to be an amazing painter (you might remember our giveaway with her). She has an awesome blog and a sweet old house – complete with extra high ceilings that we covet and 100+ year old details that make “old farmhouse” the dream for so many people (us included). So we can’t wait to show you around. Let’s get to snooping… Almost every item in Lesli’s home has been loved back to life. Like the old bench that sits in her entryway, which she got secondhand for $50 and painted a fresh new color. All

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What We Look For & Look Past While House Hunting

Q: I have a house-hunting question for you. What do you look for? What do you look past? Help! My main complaint of all the older homes that we’re looking at in our price range is that they all feel dated, but that seems to be what you guys look for. How do you know which dated houses are worth buying and which ones are lost causes? I keep worrying we’ll end up in a money pit! – Aviva (not the one from Housewives of NY). A: First of all, I’m glad you clarified that you’re not NYC Aviva. Haha. And second of all, we actually get this question a lot. So when it comes

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How To Make A DIY Window Shade in 15 Minutes

Remember when John mused about who would win the bathroom race (he wanted to frame out the mirror and I was on the DIY window shade train) here? Well, chugga chugga, baby. Momma won. We got the fabric at an outlet called Mary Jo’s a while back (here’s an affiliate link to it on amazon for folks in other areas). We threw Clara a wormy birthday party with her two favorite colors – pink & orange – so when it came to picking out the fabric for the hall bathroom, where we log some serious potty and bath time with her, I couldn’t resist adding some fun with the bold patterned fabric that featured a few of Clara’s favorite

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Birfday Bidness

As you guys might know, last Thursday was John’s 31st birthday and West Elm in Houston whipped up this amaaaaaazingly DIY-riffic cake for him. #edibletapemeasure #umyeahtheressawdust Every year we write birthday posts about what we got each other and this year John actually got (well, is getting, since I’m letting him pick it out) a nail gun (more info on that when we get it). So because I don’t have photos of him holding up various presents like we’ve shared in former years like this post from last year) I thought I’d over-share slash cheese it up on a Tuesday afternoon with a little brain dump of seven things I love about John (surprise, honey!).

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TV In The Bedroom? We Say Yes.

We’re bringing someone else into the bedroom. And it’s… gasp… a TV. We were originally anti-TV-in-the-bedroom, so we know it’s not for everyone (and it’s downright sinful to some) but we only have one TV in our entire house – in the living room – and this guy was just sitting unused in the playroom (ever since we upsized the living room one since he wasn’t large enough to actually see from the sofa)… so we’ve gone and changed our minds. Haha. There’s actually a real reason behind the decision: more and more we’ve been thinking about how we have issues with work/life balance and it’s hard for us to “shut off.” Which is why

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How To Frost A Window

We wish we had a giant bathroom update to share, but we’re at that phase of the project where some of the bigger things have been checked off (building a shelf, painting the walls) and a few little mid-point upgrades are on the agenda since we’ve been flying around a lot lately (10 flights in 11 days!!). But now that we’re back home, the next bathroom installment will be bigger (either framing out the mirror and making a shade from some amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with) so hopefully this tides you guys over. And since I hate to mention “amazingly bold fabric that I’m obsessed with” without showing it to you… behold: Remember it

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Finally, Now We Can Show You The Playroom…

Quick note: Tonight we’ll be in Minneapolis at the West Elm on 3879 Gallagher Drive for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 6pm (we hear this parking lot is small, but there’s a larger lot at a nearby Macy’s as well as a ramp that leads to a parking garage which should hopefully help – as will getting there early, carpooling, or getting dropped off). More info here. We’d love to see ya there! Remember how you guys were asking us to take photos of the holy-cow-that’s-crazy playroom packed with secret book projects, stuff for our yard sale, and future projects so we could share them when the book was finally out? Well, I don’t

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