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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Adventures In DC

Ok, so this random Friday post is 25% about a quick little project, 25% about some house crashing-ish shots, 25% about general Clara cuteness, and 25% about Jewel. Yes, the singer. Who’s ready? It all began with a weekend trip to DC to visit my BFF Cat (who John and I set up with John’s cousin Travis and then they got married and had two kiddos- so yes I’m now related to my BFF). She, Travis, and their cute kiddos Elsa and Edison live in Arlington, Virginia and took us into the city to check out the National Aquarium in DC (John’s sister Katie along with her two sons John and Ben and her hubby

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Tour Time

UPDATE: This post isn’t updated with recent tour info, so click here to see our official regularly-updated tour page. It’s heeeeeere. That fateful day when we finally get to reveal the finalized tour dates for our book, fresh from our publisher’s mouth (er, email). A few things to note are: 1. If it were humanly possible we would parasail/glacier climb/spelunk to every last crevice of the globe to thank each one of you personally for reading our blog. But given all the factors that go into planning and executing one of these things, we’re extremely grateful to be able to slide through all of the places they’ve scheduled us – especially since this was originally

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Using Personal Keys To Make Shadowbox Art

Last week during the blogiversary madness, there were requests for more fast & *almost* free projects – especially the ones that renters and homeowners alike can whip out in under an hour. So here’s an under $10 project that I took ten minutes, tops. Do you get the hidden meaning behind the keys? Look a little closer. See how there’s one tall key, one medium key, and two small keys (one of which is horizontal while one’s vertical)? Well, that’s our little key family. Haha. Burger’s the horizontal guy. When I saw a bowl of keys for $2 at an antique store on the way home from Granny’s, I stared at them for a while,

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Digging Up A Planting Bed To Plant More Grass

Oh man, we were busy little yard bunnies this Sunday. As in, we probably logged about four hours out there. We started while Clara napped, which ended up being three hours (woot!) and then we each switched off watching Clara while the other finished a few things up. The mission? To have more than a few tiny slivers of grass in our backyard. See how that giant weedy-looking planting bed robs the yard of some great Burger & bean-friendly running-around area? The pictures don’t do it justice, but the planting bed is at least fifteen feet wide and the giant stick-like butterfly bush is around eight or nine feet tall. You think I’m kidding, right?

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Blogiversary 5: Goal Tending

It’s time for some annual goal declaring (because nothing lights a fire under your keister like a big ol’ public proclamation). Let’s do this thang. Goal #1: Embrace The Crazy (aka Be Flexible): After five years of blogging and over two years of both of us doing it full time, we’ve learned that no two days are ever the same. But this upcoming year is about to get crazier than anything we’ve ever experienced. Between the release of our book on Nov 6th and a 15 city+ book tour along with some secret side projects that we can’t wait to reveal to you guys (no mom, that’s not a we’re pregnant euphemism) the next 365

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The Facts & Figures Of Blogging

Fire up your laser pointers and bunsen burners. We’re back with our yearly numerical slash statistical goodness. Each year we like to break down what YHL looks like by the numbers. Some are crazy. Some are surprising. Some are serious. Some are, well, just for fun. Oh and this year we thought we’d include a few fun blog facts that might blow your mind (no guarantees though, your mind might remain intact). Fun Bloggy Fact #1: Each month the cost for us to host our site (so it loads well/doesn’t crash, etc) is more than our mortgage payment. Fun Bloggy Fact #2: We have written over 2,311 posts in the past five years, and if

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Behind The Scenes: A Day In The Life Of A Blogger

As we mentioned yesterday, it’s Blogiversary Week, baby (still can’t believe that we have been at this for half a decade). So we had some fun recording an average day in the life from both of our perspectives, so you can see what each of us – and even Clara and Burger – may be doing at any given time. Woop, here it is: 6:00 am – 7:30 am JOHN: The whole house is sleeping, so I duck out for a 5-mile run down by the river. I’m home by 7:30 and no one even knows I’m gone. 7:30 am – 8:00 am SHERRY: I wake up around 7:45 and the house is too quiet

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Blogiversary 5: It’s On Like Donkey Kong

Holy cow, have we really been blogging for half a decade?! Crazytown. It feels like just yesterday that we were creating a basic page with a big blue-background so friends and family members could drop in on our first home’s kitchen makeover. For our fifth blogiversary we wanted to host a parade complete with homeowners marching by waving hammers and paint rollers, but since we couldn’t get that together – and it honestly sounded like someone could lose an eye that way – we decided to go for the next best thing: a week of blogiversary madness and behind the scenes hullabaloo (just like we’ve done for the past few years here, here, and here).

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Installing A Dual Flush Button To Our Toilet

We made four little updates around here, so I thought I’d smash them all into a quick recap post for ya. First, we have been meaning to convert our bathroom toilet to a dual flush version for a while (we already did it to the one in the hallway and the one in our first house – seriously we LOVE this upgrade!). Sadly when we attempted to use this kit that we bought on Amazon (here’s the affiliate link for ya), it turns out that our new toilet isn’t compatible. Apparently the angle/shape of the bottom of the tank kept it from attaching correctly. So we padded down the hall to the guest room and installed it

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First House Vs. Current House: One Year Later

Q: I just read an old post of yours where you compared your last house to your current one – and it looks like you preferred the old one in some ways because you had done more renovation, etc.  I think it would be awesome if you did a do-over of that post now that it has been so long and you’ve done so much to improve your new house! – Thanks for all the inspiration, Sarah A: You’re right, it’s high time we revisited this weird little comparison of our first house and our current one, so let’s get right into it. It all started when someone (ironically also named Sarah) said this about

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Our $170 Bathroom Makeover For Granny

Who’s ready for the big bathroom reveal? As we mentioned in Monday’s post, there are almost always three main steps to room makeovers (some of which take forever and a day, and some that are done fast and furiously, like this bathroom blitz): So Day Three (see Day One and Day two here and here) was all about those finishing touches. Here’s how it all went down (and yes, I was writing on the back of a paper plate with a calligraphy marker – gotta use whatcha got, haha). Ta-daaa! It took about an hour to make some custom curtains for Granny’s window thanks to some designer fabric (made by Braemore, if that helps) that

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11 Ways To Save Money On Clothes

Ever since this post about Clara’s clothes, I’ve actually gotten a surprising amount of requests for a post about how I save money on my own clothes, what my staples are, and how I generally get by without spending a ton of my momdrobe – er, I mean wardrobe. And although I’m hardly a fashion plate (that idea makes me snort-laugh) I do love a deal, so here’s a rundown on how I save money when I’m shopping for myself along with some sneaky sale tricks I’ve learned along the way and a few general dressing rules that seem to work for me (slash keep me from buying stuff I’ll regret/never wear/stare angrily at in

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