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.

| By | | 255 Comments

Buying Fabric At Mary Jo’s Near Charlotte

Earlier this morning we mentioned that we slipped through Mary Jo’s fabric store outside of Charlotte, NC again (read about our first trip here) where they have bolts of discount fabric stacked higher than my 5’2″ self. We thought it would be fun to share what caught our eye along with what we actually bought since some of you guys might be on a fabric pilgrimage of your own. And the good news is that a lot of this fabric should be sold by multiple places (although MJ’s prices are hard to beat) so if you see something you love, I’ve tried to include as many details as possible so you can sleuth it out

[ Read More ]

| By | | 201 Comments

Sneaky Little Petersiks

S’prise. We’ve been on the road for the past five days and just got home last night at 7pm after a nine hour drive. Did we unpack or snuggle up to Karl the Sectional after our home sweet home arrival? Nah, we threw this post together. Just your typical case of “unpacking procrastination” at its finest. Actually I’m just dying to fill you guys in on our adventures, and typical annoyingly energetic gal that I am, I’m too excited to relax. Anyway, we headed out early Thursday morning for Charlotte, NC and stayed there through Saturday morning. Then it was off to Loganville, GA where we remained until early Monday morning when we hit the

[ Read More ]

| By | | 187 Comments

Getting The Scale Right With Furniture

Nope, this isn’t a weight loss post. The scale that I’m talking is this too small had-it-so-we-used-it bookshelf that we shoved into the guest room (just days before my mom arrived) a few months back. Talk about teeny tiny: And somehow we forgot to update you guys about a little switcheroo that took place after we got our new (well, very old) dresser for the bedroom from John’s dad. So here’s a very belated dresser related news flash: we moved our old malm (from Ikea five years ago when we moved to Richmond from NYC) into the guest room. So it looked like this: The scale is definitely better. Someday we’d love to get a

[ Read More ]

| By | | 269 Comments

Shopping In Bethany Beach

We snuck off to the beach over Memorial Day weekend to spend some time with John’s family (at their amazing beach house near Bethany Beach, Delaware) so we thought we’d share our house-related adventures. A while back a reader (thanks Ann!) recommended checking out The Old Screen Door in Lewes (about 30 mins from Bethany), so we took a drive out there and it was the cutest little town (which boasts that it was the first town in the first state). Here’s the front of the shop: It’s not very big inside, but there’s a collection of really fun old stuff going on (mixed with some new stuff to keep things interesting). And Clara loves

[ Read More ]

| By | | 522 Comments

How To Dye Fabric Chair Slipcovers

Remember how we envisioned modern and cheerful green leather parsons chairs around a chunky wood table from pretty much the moment we moved in? And how we decided that dyed-green slipcovers were pretty much the same thing when we found chairs for $25 and slipcovers for $23? Well, we were wrong. I dyed two of the chairs green and they were just not “it” (even if we altered the shade of green, we just knew it was the wrong way to go for us as soon as we saw these babies): Especially considering that there would be seven or eight of them around the table at all times (and we have the bold built-ins going

[ Read More ]

| By | | 1 Comment

May Superlatives

Note: This is a retroactive post that I cobbled together in December of 2011 so I could make this page full of monthly recaps for the entire year (our first in our new house!). Yup, I’m just a bit type A. So here’s what we tackled throughout the month of May – high school yearbook style. Most Improved: Organizing The Insanely Cluttered “Playroom” (more like “disaster area”). Biggest Procrastinator: Painting The Dining Room (after living with swatches for five months) Most Repetitive: Mounting Prints On Canvases (Not Once But Twice) Most Outdoorsy: Sketched Up An Outdoor “Floor Plan” (not to scale though – oops – the house is way too big & our almost-acre lot

[ Read More ]

| By | | 140 Comments

Budget Blooms: Birthday Leftovers

You may have noticed a bouquet in the middle of the table for Clara’s party two weeks ago. Well, sadly some of those blooms are no longer among the living: But there are a few that are still going strong, so I decided to drop them into three of my favorite vases (from Ikea a while back) for this happy little effect: And yes, they’re on the windowsill in our bathroom. Just because I realized that we have never had any flowers in that room (there are all sorts of “firsts” in this house for me – including flowers in the bathroom) so I had to revel in the first-bathroom-blooms occurrence. It feels good to

[ Read More ]

| By | | 494 Comments

How To Use Acrylic Medium To Glue A Large Print To A Canvas

Woo to the hoo. Our bedroom horse art arrived, so we’re back to share the whole how-to-affix-them-to-canvas adventure. The title might have already given it away, but even though they arrived on Monday afternoon (spoiler alert) it took two attempts to get ‘er done in this instance. First I went with the ol’ spray adhesive route (for $4 from JoAnn with a coupon), since I used this for anything and everything back in my art school days (it was like the duct tape of our world). It’s usually a great candidate since it’s acid free (which means it’s good for not ruining prints) and it’s listed as “all purpose” and “permanent” right on the label.

[ Read More ]

| By | | 256 Comments

A Sleek & Happy House Tour

This house just makes me smile, so of course I had to House Crash the heck out of it and share it with you guys. Behold- the eye candy that is Kelly Moore’s amazing casa. You might know her from her killer photography blog (all of her DIY-related posts can be found here) or her genius line of camera bags. But you don’t really know a person until you poke around their house, so let’s get to it. We’ll start in the kitchen, where Kelly and her husband whipped up some extra thick homemade concrete counters (and shared a tutorial right here). Everything from the happy painted cabinets to the apron sink and the sleek

[ Read More ]

| By | | 154 Comments

Outdoor Updates & A Tour

Ok, so lots of people (me included) found this original exterior tour of our yard a bit hard to follow. Our first house was nice and simple. We could describe the back and the front and the sides and call it a day with this ol’ post of yore, which even included this little sketch: But this house is just waaay more complicated. Even though both lots are about the same size (almost an acre) this one is a lot less long and narrow than the last one. It’s more fat and square-ish. And it has a lot more quirks like this little alley between the original part of the house and the addition in

[ Read More ]

| By | | 292 Comments

How To Sew A Table Runner

I’m not a runner, but I can make one. I used to run track and cross country in middle school and high school. I actually ran a 5:09 mile once (with the help of some downhill portions of a course and the fact that I was like 80 lbs). It happened once and never again (I usually clocked in between 6:20 and 7:10). But those days are gone (due partially to an ankle injury but mostly to laziness). Now I only run when I’m being chased. Or when I lose track of the baby. But making a runner? That I can do. You guys actually got a sneak peek of my recent runner creation in

[ Read More ]

| By | | 384 Comments

My Little Ponies

First, let’s appreciate how fun My Little Ponies really were. I think I had around 6 as a child. And it was magical. But in house-news-that’s-somewhat-related-to-the-throwback-mention-above, after what feels like months (ok, it actually has been months) we’re finally ready to fill the empty wall space on either side of the sink nook in our bedroom with something. And since I had fun making a little Pinterst inspired painting (but then resolutely decided that I didn’t want it to live in the bedroom)… It was time for John and I to have a few long chats about what we really wanted to fill the empty space across from the bed (no pressure, we’ll just wake

[ Read More ]