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 | | 259 Comments

Cleaning & Organizing Our Closet

In the words of Eminem… I’m cleaning out my closet. But first a closet-themed dance break for the Marshall Mathers fans out there (I can actually do a mean Eminem impression): Ok, now that we have that out of the way, I’ll get to the meat and potatoes of this post. I’m actually not currently cleaning out my closet, the deed has already been done. And it’s not just my closet, it’s both of ours. We’ve mentioned a few times that before we got a proper dresser we were living for over three months with piles of socks and pajamas on the floor of our bedroom closet. Yeah, it was a disaster, and we just

[ Read More ]

| By | | 472 Comments

A Keeping-It-Real House Tour Video

I thought it might be fun to walk around the house with the Flip cam and show you guys how each room can look on an average day. You know, before we pick the clothes up off the floor, put away Clara’s toys, and fold the big blankets that we snuggle under on the sofa. So here’s an impromptu house tour (while John and Clara ducked out to the post office and grocery store) in all of its average everyday glory: Things to note: Ugh, I have a cold. Sorry about my annoying voice. Who am I kidding, my voice annoys me even when I’m not crazy congested. I’m terrible at walking around, talking, and

[ Read More ]

| By | | 298 Comments

12 Design Mistakes We (Hopefully) Won’t Make Again

Q: I have an idea for a blog post. “Design mistakes we won’t make again.” As I look through pictures of all the beautiful work you’ve done, I’m thinking of choosing many similar styles & purchases. But then I wonder, over time – did you ever regret a design choice? – Shannon A: That’s a good one. And now for 1,970 words on the subject. We’ll start by saying that we definitely don’t always know what we’re doing when we do something (us = so not experts) so we just try to take things one day at a time and learn as we go. We make tons of mistakes. You’ve just gotta feel your way

[ Read More ]

| By | | 210 Comments

Broken Up About My Broken Ceramic Dog

All The King’s Horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put my faceless ceramic pooch together again. Well, maybe they could, but they weren’t around. So I tried to do it myself, using only a mother’s love (and some super glue). And because I’m a freak about fumes I did it on the back patio while Clara was napping (baby monitor in hand). Pretty much immediately things got wonky. Womp-womp. Nothing matched up and it looked all crazy and jagged. I think the fact that some shards were just too small to keep & reglue threw everything off. And somehow there was a huge chunk from the top of my beloved pup’s head that was

[ Read More ]

| By | | 636 Comments

Playroom Plans

You guys already know that our playroom is looking kinda rough these days (thanks to this whole house update post from last week): But we’ve decided that once we clear it out, it’ll actually suit our family better as a less traditional space. Burger is a beloved member of our family, so we think he deserves his own little area. And since Clara plays pretty much all over the house (in the office, the living room, the kitchen, and her room – depending wherever we are with her) we won’t really need an official “playroom” until baby number two comes along (and we turn the playroom into a bedroom). And I’ll spoil the surprise for

[ Read More ]

| By | | 7 Comments

March 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 March – high school yearbook style. Most Archeological: Digging around in the dirt next to our driveway to find all sorts of things (and eventually cleaning things up after the treasure hunt ended). Most Likely To Result In A Crack Joke: Hanging a ceiling medallion in Clara’s room (to solve a cracked drywall situation). Most Times Square-esque: Our new chandelier from Ikea, which we hung

[ Read More ]

| By | | 227 Comments

Limbing Up Trees So You Can See The House Again

Alternate post title: Trees: 0. Sherry: 2. You might not remember what our first house looked like when we bought it so I’ll remind you: And this is what it looked like five hours after John left and I went crazy with a clipper (surprise!): Three cheers for being able to see the house. And we gained a view of the neighborhood from our front windows. You know, instead of the view of a dense “tree fence.” So much better. Plus it was free and gave me a nice little arm workout. Of course that house’s curb appeal was a pretty constant four and a half year evolution (these things take time) so when we

[ Read More ]

| By | | 370 Comments

How To Customize Ikea Furniture Legs With Paint

That’s right, Karl‘s legs are pale no more. After some thought we decided to give all 12 of our sectional’s cheap looking birch legs a coat of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint to deepen them and give them a subtle sheen and dimension that brown paint just wouldn’t offer. It was pretty easy except it necessitated a bit of Karl disassembly. Poor guy. But once we got all of those legs off it was as simple as sanding each of them with low grit paper by hand (I used 60 grit stuff I had around). Although the legs looked pale and stain-less, they actually had some sort of clear finish on them (here’s one before sanding):

[ Read More ]

| By | | 261 Comments

Monster Eyeballs

Three cheers for a $12 fifteen minute project that makes us giggle. Because sometimes you just gotta laugh. We switched out the old knobs on our dining room built-ins. The first step is to put on your safety goggles and protective gloves. Kidding. The first step is to unscrew the old ones and the second step is to screw in the new ones. So easy. Here’s a little in-progress action shot for ya: And here are the new ones all “installed”: But back to the whole monster eyeballs thing. When I fell in love with these greeny-yellow knobs at Hobby Lobby (for $1.50 a pop thanks to a 50% off sale), it never crossed my

[ Read More ]

| By | | 347 Comments

Three Months In…

We finally got around to updating our House Tour page with some progress pics and it dawned on us that we haven’t really done a progress report about the new house since this one at Day One and this one at Day Fifteen, so here’s where we are at a little over three months in (Day 101 or so). Here’s the house’s original formal living room that looked into the original dining room on moving day (which we decided to turn into an entryway/dining room that looks into a home office because that better suits the way we live): Here’s the dining room looking into the converted office now, thanks to arranging those shelves and

[ Read More ]

| By | | 229 Comments

A Crisp & Classic House Tour

This house crashing adventure in Northern Virginia had us drooling over materials and finishes, especially in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Talk about a gorgeous place to come home to. And here’s Melissa The Homeowner now, so let’s go in. Her house was actually built in 1940, but she and her husband Jim added an awesome addition to the back of the house in 2009 which included a new kitchen. And it just happened to be one of the most amazing ones we’ve ever been in. So we’ll cut right to the chase. You can see it down the hallway near the front door… … and it’s glorious. Is it not? Everything from the thick

[ Read More ]

| By | | 584 Comments

Oh Snap.

And now for a behind the scenes ceramic animal related story. While we were working on this… … this happened: Since I’m still not ready to talk (or write) about it in depth, here’s John’s depiction of how the tragedy occurred: Alas, my favorite giant ceramic dog (snagged from HomeGoods three years ago for just 29 bucks) sadly lost his face. In the words of the world’s most famous blogger, it sucked and then I cried. Yes, there’s a candle lit vigil in progress. Goodbye Mr. Ceramic Dog. You were a wonderful pet. Never had to clean up after you once. Until this happened. I might try to glue him back together (although some of

[ Read More ]