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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Our Top Decorating Tip: The Middle Makes No Sense

So many people ask us how we know we’re going in “the right direction” in the middle of a project. We try to describe our method as one big study in trial and error, with course correcting and tweaking along the way, but we also haven’t talked much about how we try to at least come up with a general plan in the beginning of a project, and then we try to stick to it loosely as we go, since it gives us a “path” to follow. Why? Because (sing it with me): the middle makes no sense. It’s a phrase that John and I toss around a lot as we go and we realized

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House Crashing: Lesley & Jeff

We can’t wait to share this house crashing adventure because you’ve actually seen how Lesley & Jeff live…. but that was over 4.5 years ago (before they had two sweet little boys and moved into a new home for their growing family). It’s actually a mid-century split level house in a charming woodsy neighborhood right here in Richmond, and of course Lesley and Jeff have completely made it their own. But first, just to refresh your memory, here’s their first house – which we crashed all the way back in 2008! But back to their new place. You guys might remember that Lesley is a master of making ugly things into assets. For example, she

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How To Make A Fake Roman Shade

Alright folks, you know I have a love affair with fabric, so when I realized I had never attempted to make a roman shade (even a fixed one that’s just for looks) I knew I had to get on that. So here’s how I got my fake roman shade on. First of all, is this bare kitchen window begging for some fabric action, or what? It actually leads into the sunroom, so it didn’t need anything functional to draw/close, which is why I opted to go the faux shade route (actually all of the bamboo blinds in our first house remained open since I loved the light flooding in, so if you’re not a shade-drawer,

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House Crashing in Cincinnati!

Quick update: Today we’ll be getting cozy in Boston at the West Elm on 160 Brookline Avenue for cookies, cocoa, and a book signing at 6pm. More info here. We’d love to see ya there! We shared a sneak peek of this House Crashing adventure in our post about Cincinnati, and we finally sifted through the 200+ photos that we took to get this post together for ya. So let’s let ourselves in, shall we? Did you see the little welcome note right on that happy yellow door? So cute, eh? And I love the three glass panes in that door. As for who lives here, meet Rick and Jessie. They were literally the sweetest

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When Acorn Crafts Go Terribly Wrong

Ack, we’re painting the hall bathroom, and we can’t wait to finish, shoot pics, and share them with you guys! But since that’s still in progress, I thought this stellar example of things not always working out might make you guys smile. We always get asked “what happens if you try something and it doesn’t work?” and I always say “we blog about it, of course!” You know, like this and this and this. We love sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. And we can totally relate to a failed craft project or ten. So here we go… In Richmond it has been raining men. If by men I mean acorns. Seriously, those

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Let’s Go Behind The Scenes (Waaay Behind)

Ahhh! Our book baby is officially out there in the world. Holy cow it’s crazy. We thought once the book was actually released this might feel real but it still feels like it’s a big game of make believe – despite all of these awesome photos that you guys keep tweeting and Facebooking to us (anything with a dog, a baby, or a funny face = awesomeville). And ever since those early days of cobbling this labor of love together, we’ve been itching to share some behind the scenes peeks, so it’s an understatement to say that the 27 photos in this post were burning a hole in our pockets for nearly a year. So

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House Crashing: Classic & Natural With A Twist

Quick note Book holla! -We’re publishing this post early since we’ll be at our stop in Wilton, CT this morning and then we’ll be at Bookends in Ridgewood, NJ at 5:30 pm (and staying as late as it takes to hang/sign/geek out with everyone). More details here. We’d love to see ya! A little while ago we took a road trip up to Northern Virginia to crash an awesome house that we thought you guys would love. It’s in a charming town called Herndon, and Michele and Nate poured some serious love (in the form of some serious work, time, and sweat) into their home. So let’s get our with the tour on, shall we?

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How To Match New Paint To An Old Paint Job

Let’s talk about the buffet again. Remember the one that we got for a steal off craigslist and parked in our entryway? Here he is now to jog your memory (sidenote: I think everyone should always pronounce jog as yog and jogging as yogging – it’s infinitely funnier). Dude was gorgeous, but he had a few little bumps and bruises that I wanted to heal. I wanted to play nurse with the buffet, ok? So file this under super speedy quick fixes – heck the whole thing only took about half an hour and ran me under $3. As for my materials list, here it is: Yup, all it took was a small craft brush

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Homemade Jesse & Slinky Dog Costumes From Toy Story

Dude, I did it! I semi-DIYed my very first Halloween costumes, and I lived to tell the tale. It actually wasn’t too hard (do you believe that I didn’t sew a single thing?). Holla! In case it’s not super obvious, Clara asked to go as Jessie (the cowgirl from Toy Story) and Burger gets to be Slinky Dog (also from Toy Story). Here were most of my supplies for Clara’s costume: a “cowgirl hat” from a local pop-up Halloween store red yarn and white duct tape from AC Moore flared jeans from Old Navy (you know I used a coupon and bought them on discount Tuesdays) The first thing I tackled was making a long

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Framing Keepsakes In Shadow Boxes

Maybe we should rename our site Young Shadowbox Love. They’re just my jam. I’ve stuffed them with everything from calendars with special dates circled… … to keys from all of our past homes… … to wedding paraphernalia. I think it just goes back to loving the idea of displaying things that make for happy memories instead of tucking them into a closet in a box that never gets opened. So pretty much from the second we started writing our book over three years ago I had my eye out for things that I could save and stick in a box to forever commemorate this crazy journey that we never could’ve guessed we’d ever be on.

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How To Make A Big Magnetic Chalkboard

It’s Tuesday the 30th… 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! This time John and I tried our hand at making a large chunky-framed leaning mirror – except instead of it actually being a mirror we made it into a giant chalkboard (since chalkboard paint is probably the most Pinterest-tastic material out there, haha). By designing it like a large leaning mirror, it can move from room to room, and it can be a place where we write sweet notes, make lists, and enjoy Clara-scribble (we secured it to

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My Date With Nate

A bunch of you have been asking what I got from Tar-jay for Nate’s big weekend debut, and since I’m a die-hard fan (remember when our hands almost touched here?) of course I was the first girl at the store on Sunday morning right as they opened. Yup, even though we just got back from Cincinnati the night before, I’m a Noupie (Nate Groupie) so you can bet my buns were there, and they were excited. Then I went in. Womp-womp, no Nate stuff out. And when I asked where it was, the two sweet Target girls were all “Nate who?” Instead of extolling the virtues of Nate, which I totally would have done if

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