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 Paint A Chair

Our $35 secondhand chairs – found here – aren’t quite done yet (picture me tapping my foot as I not-so-patiently wait for the paint to dry) but we thought we’d share our makeover progress in the interest of real-time fun. First a quick rundown of all the colors that John & I talked about for the office chairs at one point or another: emerald green turquoise, aqua, or dark teal dark gray or light gray plum navy white or light celery lime green or grellow Oh and here they are in the office before paint and new upholstery (from a few different POVS), just to refresh your memory: Here’s where our brains went when we

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Wall Stenciling Tips & After Photos

My little stenciling project above the chair rail in the office has officially concluded. Woooo to the hooooo! It only took three 4.5 hour installments spread out over four days (so my hand-claws could turn back into hands between sessions). You can read all about my stenciling process here), but in short: it was well worth all that work and a bag of chips. Behold: Of course since it’s a subtle tone-on-tone effect, the further away that you get the more – well, subtle – it gets. In person when you stand at the doorway to the office you see pretty feathery texture, but of course in photos it’s somehow MUCH harder to capture. Here’s

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Easy DIY Art With Food Coloring

All week I imagined a big office stencil reveal post here. Sadly, it’s not done yet. Oh DIY, why do you take such pleasure in toying with my emotions? Quit playing games with my heart, home improvement. But regardless of the fact that it’s not exactly a quick project, it’s looking awesome and totally going to be worth the blood, sweat, and tears (all three of which have occurred, incidentally). So hopefully by this weekend I’ll be doing some celebratory Rocky laps around the house (yes, with music blaring and fists in the air) and I can share photos & deets of the whole shebang on Monday. Woot! Until then, here’s a still-needs-to-be-finished wall (the

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How To Stencil A Wall

Dude, stencils are no joke. But I did it! I bit the bullet and ordered the stencil that John and I have been pining after for the past month (mentioned here a few weeks back). We loved the idea of adding some subtle tone on tone detailing above the chair rail in our office (we didn’t want anything with too much contrast since it’ll compete with the dark teal built-ins and the fun curtains in the nearby dining room). So we settled on a softer gray tone with a tiny pop of color (leftover grellow paint from the adjoining kitchen). At 54 honking dollars it was hardly a drop in the bucket, but let me tell

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Ten Things We’ve Learned As Pro Bloggers

We thought we’d wrap up blogiversary week with one last post for anyone else writing a blog and/or trying to make a business out of it. We don’t like to think of ourselves as formal blogging experts, but since we always share our learn-as-we-go insights when it comes to home and DIY, we figured it made sense to share what we’ve learned in the past four years of blogging too. Oh and we included pictures of Burger to help illustrate some points along the way. You know, for kicks. Rule #1: A blog should be born from passion (not a business plan). At least for us, that seemed to work. We write about DIY because

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Our Blogging Goals

It’s time for some annual goal declaring (because nothing lights a fire under your arse like a big ol’ public proclamation). Let’s do this thang. Goal #1: Find Balance- We mentioned that we were aiming for more balance in our lives during this 2011 resolutions post. We basically said that we’re going to try our darndest not to fall into the trap of putting all of our time, money, and energy into the house to the point that we have no life, no savings, and Clara is trapped in our casa for her entire childhood (we actually haven’t been on a big vacation since our honeymoon four and a half years ago other than some

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How Blogs Get Sponsors

We’ve once again solicited questions from you guys on Facebook for our blogiversary extravaganza (of the personal, not decorating, variety). And just like we did in 2009 and 2010, we had fun answering a bunch of ’em. We crammed as many responses as we could into 20 minutes, so unfortunately not every one of the 80+ questions got answered, but we figured 20 minutes was already pushing the bounds of an acceptable YouTube video length. Haha. Here are a few things that we cover: Our favorite and least favorite qualities in each other What our neighbors think about the blog If the former owners of our house read the blog Our weirdest fan interaction Who

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A Day In The Life Of A Home Blogger

As we mentioned yesterday, it’s Blogiversary Week, baby (still can’t believe it’s been four whole years). And since we shared a day in the life during our last annual celebration (and about a year before that too) it’s time for this year’s breakdown (similarities: no day is ever the same, differences: now we have a toddler running around and a 260+ page book we’re writing on the side). This year we had fun recording a full day 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: 7:30 am – 8:00 am JOHN: Clara’s awake early

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Celebrating Our Blogging Anniversary

It’s kind of unbelievable to us that it was four whole years ago that we started this little ol’ blog (just for friends and family members to drop in on our first home’s kitchen makeover). In the words of Gwen Stefani, that shhhh is bananas. So much has happened since then. And since we’re nothing but creatures of habit, we’re psyched to celebrate a week of blogiversary madness and behind the scenes hullabaloo as usual. Starting right now. Well tomorrow (Monday) to be exact. So raise the roof, y’all. It’s about to get festive up in here. These are a few of the things that we have on the agenda for this week: a day

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Missoni At Target – What We Got

We get asked pretty frequently about where we find inspiration. The short answer: everywhere. Other blogs, design mags, real life, family and friends, clothing, nature, even reality TV. Yup, I’ll admit it. Who takes pictures of the TV for inspiration slash fun? This girl (points to self with thumbs). And then they get uploaded with all of our other photos and John dumps them into an iPhoto folder that’s aptly named “TV pics.” And every once in a while I come across them and click through and say “oh yeah that was Law & Order, I loved that ceiling” or “that headboard makes me all clammy, in a good way” or “poor actors slash reality

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Restocking Our Fridge For Less

As many of you know, hurricane Irene was a total jerk to our neck of the woods. Not only did it knock trees into nearby homes, cars, poles, and roads, it also took the power out for a nice long time. Three days for us. But that was nothing compared to some other areas of our neighborhood (where it was out for over seven days), and other parts of Richmond (which didn’t get it back for close to two weeks). There was even a contest for the last person to get their power back on a local website. So yes, three power-less days were annoying, but it could have been waaay worse. The only thing

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Small And Simple Bedroom Updates

We’d like to present our bedroom with the award for Most Often Tweaked. It just seems like time goes by and a few things get added to the mix and it inspires us to remove the top bed rails, hang a ram above the bed, ditch the duvet, or move out some horse art. But we’re all about trial and error and learning as we go (who gets it all right on the first try? And if you do, please share your secrets!). It’s definitely one of our more out there rooms (read: not everyone’s cup of tea), but we like that since it’s our own private bedroom and not a common space where we

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