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 Use A Rug To Define Your Living Area

We’re working on a few projects this morning, but in the meantime we thought we’d toss out this work-with-what-you’ve-got quickie. Some people have been asking where we got the armless loveseat in our living room, but that’s actually just two of our old cheap-o Dolce chairs pushed together with two Ikea faux sheepskins covering the seam. See, here they are divided: And united: Thanks to the front legs sitting on the rug, they don’t scoot or separate, so they’re actually fully functional. If we were going to keep them this way for a while we’d probably use metal L-brackets to connect them from underneath the frame, but since Karl’s arrival could completely change the layout

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Why We Bought An Ikea Sectional

We recently went on a sectional hunt. Maybe this post would have been more entertaining if we channeled National Geographic and sprung for an Australian voice over artist to say things like “they wait in the brush, as the giant wildebeast sectional approaches” or “slowly and stealthily, the panthers Petersiks stalk their prey.” Oh well. The point is that we searched high and low for a new sectional. We didn’t just look around these here parts (now I’m getting all southern on you). We took a road trip all the way up to DC (2 hours north) to drop in on the Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams store along with a huuuge Room & Board

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Painting The Wood Trim In Our Living Room

Glad that’s out of the way. Painting the trim was as long and tedious of a process as we expected. Maybe more-so actually, but it’s done! Wahoooo! And it feels pretty darn good. Seriously, there was more than one happy dance (one on Friday night when we finished, and another one in the morning when we saw the room in the light). What is it about certain annoying home improvement jobs that make you want to ugly-cry while doing them but happy-cry when you’re done? Talk about roller-coaster emotions. In the end, we never regret them, and we’re happy we got ‘er done. We’re just not ready to “do them all over again” the next

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We Found A Note Hidden In Our House!

You know how we hid a secret note in our first house to hopefully be discovered in a few decades? Well, we found one in our new house! It doesn’t appear to be very old, so we’re guessing it’s from the previous owners (who lived here for 22 years, so it’s still pretty amazing). Where was it? Tucked behind the large wall mirror in the hall bathroom. See that tiny nub sticking out under that wonky orange arrow? While John was giving Clara her bath I was hanging out with them slash standing-around-staring-at-things-I-can’t-wait-to-update when I looked up and saw it peeking out of the top of the mirror. So I tugged on the corner, revealing

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A Modern House Tour

Woot, it’s Friday! And we’re hard at work painting the trim in the living room at this. very. moment. So it seems like as good a time as any to go house crashing. We thought we’d share pics of this amazingly inspiring NYC pad that we virtually house crashed while we’re off getting our paint on. One thing’s for sure – Herman and Eduardo (the proud owners) definitely have made every last inch count. Speaking of size, their pad is just 500 square feet and it consists of a modestly sized kitchen, dining area, living area, bedroom, and bathroom. But it feels luxe and lovely, like it’s all anyone would ever need. It’s such a

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Wall Art For The Nursery

We finally hung stuff on the wall in the beanette’s room. Earth shattering right? Except it’s actually somewhat of a big deal considering we haven’t hung a single thing in the entire house except for a wreath on the back of the fireplace in the living room for Christmas. That’s right, for the last month we were card carrying picture hanging virgins in the new house. But now that we made about 34 holes (yes, I counted) in the walls of Clara’s room, our v-card is long gone. So we snapped some pics of the nursery now that it has a little more flava. The only real change from Clara’s room in our last house

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Using A Cloth Napkin For Color Scheme Inspiration

Please tell me you sung that title to the tune of the Brady Bunch? If not I’ll give you a minute to get to it. Now that we have that out of the way, I thought I’d share our inspiration command center when it comes to the new house. It’s this napkin that we scored on clearance from Crate & Barrel (which you might recognize from this post of yore). I kid you not. That napkin is like the Sue Sylvester of Casa Petersik when it comes to picking colors and pinning down that ever elusive whole-house-color-scheme. She’s loud. She’s totally in charge. And she’s fun to watch. Thankfully no bullhorn though. That wouldn’t go

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How To Paint A Mirror

The deed is done. Everyone on Team Paint The Mirror White (not to be confused with Team Edward, which I’m totally a member of) can rejoice. Our mirror above the sink went from this: To this: And I guess we should show how it originally looked when we moved in for the full before: But back to the white paint choice. After much thought (and a decent amount of flip-flopping) we decided to go with our first instinct and paint the mirror white to match the trim. It definitely looks integrated and a bit less heavy, so the nook is now a little less look-at-me-right-now distinct (which is a good thing since we’re trying to

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A Video Tour Of Our New House

So it’s been exactly a month since move-in day and it’s shameful to think that we haven’t shared a video tour of the place yet. We officially accept a virtual slap on the wrist. Or a noogie if you’re old school. But no indian burns. Gotta draw the line somewhere. Anyway, after unpacking, list making, nursery painting, door frosting, bi-fold removing, duvet ordering, bed-assembling, washer & dryer hunting, shelf removing, Christmas tree decorating, playing with ceramic animals built-in bookcase arranging, built-in bookcase painting, dealing with a plethora of mirrors (some in very odd places), bedroom painting, Christmas tree dismantling, and waiting for our new washer & dryer to arrive (update: they’re here! more details later!)

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What Could Have Been…

When we’re painting we talk about all sorts of weird things that we probably wouldn’t otherwise get around to. And while painting the bedroom we got to the topic of “names that our parents almost gave us.” Get this. My mom wanted to name me Gina. We would have been John & Gina. That made us titter. Not sure if it’s a had to be there thing though. Either way, John’s dad’s choice of names takes the cake. He wanted to name John… wait for it… Lars. Lars Petersik. How funny is that? If I had seen tall dirty blond John at work and asked a coworker “oh who’s that?” and heard them respond with

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Removing The Side Splash & Backsplash From Our Bathroom Sink

You might notice a theme when it comes to posts like this and this and this and this. Making this house feel like ours seems to be just as much about stripping things down and removing stuff as it is about adding new furnishings and wall colors. Just like the old matted carpets in the sunroom and the bathroom of our old house had to go (along with the crocheted duck curtains, the wallpaper, some small doorways, a few bi-fold doors, and the linen closet door) we’re all about working with what we have. Which could mean altering things a little bit to help them fit more within our aesthetic instead of just junking them

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How To Remove Wall Shelves And Patch & Spackle The Holes

Let’s talk about breathing room. One thing we learned from our last house was that we prefer to let rooms “breathe” a little. Which means resisting the urge to fill every corner and span of wall with furniture and plant stands and coat racks and storage baskets and everything else that you can stick in there to crowd the perimeter of a room. So after a bit of deliberation we decided that letting the previous shelf-riddled corner of the fireplace breathe was the best choice for us. I actually attacked them after only a few days of living here and realized I never shared the pics while writing my list post– so here they are.

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