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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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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How To Make Faux Needlepoint Art

Last week my brother and his wife Ali came to visit us (well, mainly Clara, haha). They live up in NYC where John & I met and fell in love, so it’s always a treat to have them in our neck of the woods and it was actually their first time seeing our new house. Since it was almost exactly their one year wedding anniversary I thought I should DIY something sweet, and since I was an accidental kleptomaniac at their wedding (where John’s long arm snapped the pic below), I knew at least one material that I’d be using: a pilfered napkin. Wait, let me explain. I had a three month old daughter who

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Painting Our Office Moonshine by Benjamin Moore

We did it. Completely out of order. Yup, we finally decided what color to paint the office and went for it. Which would have been a lot easier if we had pinned down our color pick before we built our wall-to-wall two person desk. Oh well, such is DIY life. We didn’t want to rush into choosing a wall color and then hate it after we built the desk (which would have meant having to repaint everything again after the desk was built anyway). So we waited. And waited. And discussed. And rediscussed. And waffled. And it’s a good thing that we actually did wait. Because before the desk was completed we were considering some

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Framing A Custom House Portrait

How do you like that sensationalized title? Haha. It’s like Star Magazine up in this joint. This is basically a post idea that John and I came up with when we realized that there were a surprising amount of nooks and crannies in the house that we’ve never shared. And some things that are a lot bigger than a nook or a cranny. Which is weird for two over-sharers like us. So consider that remedied now that we’re over-spilling the beans in true Petersik fashion. Without further ado, here’s the first we-can’t-believe-we-haven’t-shared-it-yet thing. Our pantry: We’ve mentioned that we have a pantry-ish cabinet next to the wall oven in our kitchen… … but realized that

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How To Make A Planked Wood Desk

So our built-in wall-to-wall desk already made some good progress this week with the painting and making-taller of our cabinets. But something was missing. Yes, remember the view from before? Yes, we were devoid a counter (aka, the desk top). John and I were actually quite indecisive about what to do when it came to that part. And whatever we did, we needed about thirteen feet of it (a length that we learned most kitchen counter suppliers wouldn’t even deliver since 12 feet was usually the max before you ended up with a seam). At first we considered ordering a legit kitchen counter top (maybe butcher block, maybe silestone, maybe this from Ikea – although

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August Superlatives

It’s that time again! When we take a moment to look back on all that we’ve done in the past month at a glance (and gather all the links in one handy place for ya). And of course we tossed in some never-before-seen stuff, just because we’re over-sharers. This month felt especially busy for us, with everything from painting, organizing, building, rearranging, crafting, art-making, upholstering, light-fixture-ing, coding, ORBing (yes, it’s a category of its own), and breaking stuff. So let’s take a walk down memory lane, with yearbook-esque superlatives, because we’re strange birds. Most Illuminating: Clipping 320 clothespins in place to create our laundry room’s clothespin chandelier for our first ever Pinterest Challenge. Oh and

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Whew. Comment Explosion.

Who knew a half-baked banquette idea could bring on the chatter like that? Over 800 comments within a few hours time? Insanity. We’re loving all of the ideas and suggestions that you guys are throwing into the pot and promise to keep you posted every step of the way! There are definitely a lot more things to consider and nothing’s set in stone, so I think we’ll probably change our plan by the minute. But you know we’ll gab incessantly about it to anyone who’s willing to listen as we go. In the meantime, since I should be painting office cabinets (but haven’t had a second to tear myself away from the blog), I thought

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Kitchen Brain Dump

True to form, we’re all over the place over here. After switching up the ol’ blog design (and figuring out why the header was MIA for 20% of you – here’s hoping it’s back) we’ve also been plugging away at our $6 cabinet makeover but aren’t quite done with the painting/building-up process (here’s hoping we’ll have photos and lots o’ words to share early next week). But crazily enough, in the meantime we’ve also been doing some yard work, a random bedroom project, and have even started brainstorming the next phase of the kitchen. Hence this brain dump. We’re still saving our pennies for things like new appliances to begin the next step of our

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A Fall Themed Baby Shower

Alternate punny title: Leaf it to me. Oh yeah, there’s nothing like a little corniness on a Tuesday afternoon. I blame it on being downright giddy to have power again. Ohthankgoodness. Anyway, this weekend before the chaos that was Irene I actually helped with a little bridal shower for our cousin Megan who is getting hitched this fall. John’s mom hosted the sweet informal gathering at her place, and each one of the daughters (and in this case, me the daughter-in-law) were asked to bring a few things. I was in charge of a bowl of candy, and a little bit of table decor. Nothing too crazy, just a few small touches to hopefully get

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