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 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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How To Prep Your Lawn For Grass Seed

It’s like I have my own personal Alseed. Yes, that’s a True Blood reference. I totally called John “Alseed” the entire time that he seeded our freshly leveled and ready-for-grass backyard. Why? Because I’m corny like that. He rolled his eyes but secretly I think he liked it. What dude is going to complain about being likened to this guy? Although I tend to like my men tall, dork, and handsome. Which is why John = even better than Alcide for me (yes that’s the correct way to spell his name, I just went with Alseed for the pun). But back to the freshly cleared backyard (you can read about all the phases that led

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Painting A Thrift Store Wood Duck

We’re excited to share our Cincy adventures (we laughed! I cried! we got something confiscated at the airport!) and we’ve already started our Pinterest challenge project along with having a pretty cool before & after that’s almost done (just have to take pics and write that post for ya) so there’s lots going on in our casa – both duck related and beyond! I say duck related because, well… I snagged this odd little wooden duck for $4 at a thrift store here in Richmond (Diversity Thrift). The date? Oh, about a year ago. Yes dudes, I’m about to get on something after twelve solid months of the “thinking about getting on that” stage (you

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There’s something in the air…

Nope, not a crisp fall chill. Not falling leaves. Not the smell of apple pie and pumpkin spice. Ok, so maybe those are in the air too, but you know what else is floating around? A certain challenge, that’s what. So who’s with us? Here’s how to play along. Just pin some inspiration and do your own spin. Yup, this highly embarrassing collection of our old Halloween photos can only mean one thing: we were into odd things as children it’s high time for a fall Pinterest Challenge (not sponsored by Pinterest or anyone else, just dreamed up by Katie Bower to make us stop pinning and start doing). I’m laughing the most at my wolf

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Drilling Holes In Your Pumpkins For Spooky Wood Snakes

Just to be clear, that post title is meant to be said in a Dr. Dre-esque fashion like he does in this song (aw yeah, $herdog still rocks out to the clean version of this 1999 classic). And now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about something hardcore. Pumpkins, yo. This year we got lumpy bumpy orangy-red ones instead of the usual smooth yellow-orange guys just for kicks. The coolest thing about them is that they have stems on the bottom and top, which is kind of fun. Pretty much as soon as we got them home we got to work hollowing them out, and I directed John to make a

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Landscaping Updates In The Backyard

Update: Thanks so much for all the kind words and general awesomeness on yesterday’s post. You guys rock my socks. Ladies and gentlemen, we actually have a backyard. Well, we still need to get some grass going on, but three phases of digging and transplanting and weeding (here’s phase one, and here’s phase two) have definitely turned our Jumanji-esque backyard into a nice clearing for Burger & Clara to run around in… once that aforementioned grass makes itself at home. And we still have a ton of giant trees on the side and back of our lot to keep it from feeling too open and stark, which seems to be the sweet spot for us.

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Behind The Scenes Details Of Writing A Book

It’s Tuesday afternoon, which means it’s high time for some over-sharing (aw yeah, let’s talk about feelings, shall we?). The very first hot-off-the-presses copy of our book arrived via Fed Ex yesterday and it kind of melted my brain a little, I think. We couldn’t stop beaming at it and saying things like “It’s real! It has pages! It has a cover! It has our names on it!” – but I’d be lying if I said that “crazy-pants excited” was my only response to seeing it there on the floor looking all real and book-like. I’m also skeered. Really scared actually. And since I’ve spilled my guts about 14 months of breast feeding, owned up

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We Bought A Moose Lamp

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Moose. Moose Who? Moose Lamp!!! Wait, but some of that pic is photoshopped. I can explain. It all started when I saw a moose lamp at an moving sale back in West Virginia when we were there to makeover Granny’s bathroom… I couldn’t resist grabbing him for ten bucks. His shade was an odd too-small shape and his paint was flaking off in a few places… … but I knew I could take him from log-cabin to log-cabin-chic with a little spray paint and a new shade. So guess what? Dude, I got on that (see how these odd, usually-animal-related “Dude Get On That Already” challenges started here). I got on

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Slowly Updating Our Landscaping

When it comes to our jungle-esque backyard, we last left off with transplanting/digging up one giant 15′ garden bed and leveling it all off in the hopes of growing some lush green grass. And we’re back with a little backyard update (why yes we did spend the weekend getting muddy and why no, I still don’t have Madonna arms, but maybe a third day of bush whacking will be the charm?). Much like any other “room” in the house, it’s definitely a do-it-in-phases thing, especially since it’s such a you’ll-be-sore-after-each-phase process, but there’s something awesome about digging around in the yard for a few hours while the bean naps and Burger sleeps lazily in the

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Simple and Sweet Fall Decorating

We spent yesterday painting the outside of the new doors (along with caulking and painting some peeling siding, because I’m kind of a maniac once I get going) but I thought it would be fun to go from sharing something kinda big that happened around the house (Jean-Luc the french door) to something smaller and totally free. Sometimes it’s the little things – and you guys have been asking for some fall-decor-related posts for a while now. So remember our old kinda minimalist mantel in the kitchen? Well, I decided to slap some fall into it and spend zero bucks. Call it a Use Whatcha Got Challenge if you will. And why not do it

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We Have A New French Door!

Yesterday we shared a little ditty on DIYing vs. hiring things out with our busted old sliders as the star. They got stuck, had a broken screen, wouldn’t lock, and were rotting (you can read more about that right here). Then we decided it was high time that we finally sprung for a set of pretty new french doors that were the same style as the door in our laundry room to keep the house from feeling too hodge-podge. Here’s a process pic during the whole switcheroo… You can read more about the how and the why on the new french doors here. This post is all about the pictures (especially now that we’re done

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