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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Trying To Figure Out How To Reupholster A Rocking Chair

We got this rocking chair for $25 thanks to craigslist, because we loved the simple shape and the low back and the rich chunky wood. Plus I’ve been dying to add a rocker to the new house’s living area (since I feed Clara all the time while hanging out in the public part of the house, as opposed to retreating to the nursery or the bedroom). Plus she loves rocking at John’s mom’s house, so we thought it would contribute to good quality time with the bean. But this rocker is obviously lacking a bit in the seat and back cushion area. No worries, we just figured we’ll reupholster it. Until we realized that we

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Fall Decorating Ideas

I got all leaf-happy to add a bit of that fall/Thanksgiving vibe to the dining area. It was free and it took about ten minutes total. Here’s the dining table with some pretty branches from the cherry tree out front: And I popped a few smaller branches from the same tree into my floating cb2 hanging vases. Sure, they’re looking a little limp, but after adding some water to the vases, they perked right up. And since they’re free I’m ok with them lasting just a week or so if that’s what mother nature so ordains. Oh and I thought a $2 bag of mixed nuts looked kinda Thanksgiving-ish (saw something similar in an old

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The Floor Plan Changes We’re Planning For Our New House

We’re still holding off on taking you on a full virtual tour of our soon-to-be new home (you know, until the deal is 100% done and we actually live there). But we thought we’d give you a sense of what we’re gonna be working with thanks to this rough floor plan that we threw together with the use of floorplanner.com (it’s a free service, btw). Everything is approximate since we’re borrowing from the measurements that we took during the inspection and copied from the sales flier, but here’s what we’ve got (the washer & dryer are stacked in the small mudroom off of the carport): *There aren’t measurements for the smaller spaces like the bathrooms

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John’s Bee-Day Gift

Yesterday was my sweet hubby’s birthday so I figured I should share what Clara, Burger and I got him. John and I have recently been talking about how we’d love to amass more “real art” to complement all the DIY stuff that we have framed on every wall. This goal is definitely inspired by our friends Matt and Kristin – who we House Crashed here and here. The cheerful original art that lights up their home always has us jonesing to add more color and fun to our walls. So consider this painting to be the beginning of an exciting little collection that will happily hang in the new house: It’s a 12 x 12″

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How We Got Rid Of 100+ Things!

Nothing lights a fire under your arse like making a public proclamation that you’re going to get rid of 100 things. So even though we’re not moving until mid-December, we made our way from room to room paring down every single thing that we don’t love/need/use. The mantra as we went? No mercy. Because nothing is worse than packing, moving, and unpacking things that aren’t worth the time they took to transport or the space they’re eating up in the new place. Here’s our getting-rid-of-it office pile: Then we tackled the kitchen (Clara helped): Here’s our outgoing kitchen pile (what you don’t see are a bunch of baskets and towels on the floor): And here’s

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Window Shopping At Garden Ridge

So many people have told me about the miracle that is Garden Ridge, but I’d never been to one. Until yesterday. Yes, one finally came back to Richmond (we heard a lot about the one that used to be out by the airport but it was gone by the time we moved here 4+ years ago). Anyway, here’s what I found on my maiden voyage to the big Costco-ish warehouse full o’ house, garden, and other random stuff. My first reaction was “man this place is huge” followed by “Teresa Guidice would like it here” (NJ Housewives reference anyone?) since there are oversized urns and stone columns a plenty. Klassy. Let’s just say it’s one

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Setting A Goal To Clear Out 100 Things Before We Move

I want to get rid of (via donations, craigslist, ebay, freecycle, etc) at least 100 things before moving day. On one hand the number sounds kinda high, but on the other hand, I know there are at least 100 things in our house that we never use, need, or should spend time and effort moving. And I actually plan to keep track, writing all 100 items down on a piece of paper in list form. Why? Because I’m weird like that. To kick things off  I went through my shoes (pun intended). Amazingly, I realized that I hadn’t worn a good amount of them since leaving NYC and moving to Richmond 4+ years ago. How

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How We Sold Our House By Owner

Well, I guess we haven’t actually sold our house by owner yet. That’ll happen at closing in mid December (fingers crossed). But here’s how we got an offer. We’re hardly real estate experts, so this post is just a roundup of things that happened to work for us. Here’s hoping they help anyone else attempting to DIY their house sale too. The cool thing is that the people buying our house aren’t blog readers (they’d never heard about us or YHL- but we disclosed the blog to them to ensure that they were cool with images of the house with our furniture remaining on the site). Anyway, we thought it would encourage other FSBO peeps

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How Showings Worked When We Sold Our House By Owner

We showed our house a total of 16 times. So eventually we got to be old pros at it. At first we had no idea what we were doing. I mean of course we: cleaned the house like mad (vacuumed, dusted, etc) picked up all dog and baby toys turned on all the lights so everything looked bright and welcoming baked something yummy beforehand (so it would smell as good as it looked) removed the cutting board and the dishtowel from the counter in the kitchen so there was more granite on display removed the bath mat in the full bathroom (to show off more of the stone floor tile) polished all the faucets and

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The Process Of Selling Our House By Owner & Buying A New House

To the tune of Katy Perry’s “Hot N’ Cold”… WE’VE BOUGHT AND WE’VE SOLD! Well not really, but we’re headed in that direction. As of 5:57 pm yesterday evening we got word that the the last of our negotiations with some potential buyers of our house have gone through, so the contract on our home is officially “pending.” Which means that the contract that we’ve got in on our sweet new house (yes, we fiiiinally found one) should move right along as well (since it was contingent on selling ours first). In fact if all goes well, in a little over a month we’ll be moving from our current house directly into our new casa.

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A Hunting Lodge Chic Home Mood Board

We have no idea what our future living room will actually look like, but today this is what I’m loving: Soft gray walls (like Benjamin Moore’s Light Pewter) with crisp glossy white trim A huge comfy sectional (with washable covers- score) in a gray-brown hue. The fact that this baby is $848 has me permasmiling. Some sort of woven round ottomans (like these) that can be moved around for casual texture that can double as extra seating in a pinch. This sleek TV stand in high gloss gray from Ikea (we figure a room that’s big enough for a large sectional will probably dwarf our current TV stand, so we might need to go a

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How We Picked A Yellow-Green Front Door Color

Mmm, pickles. That will make sense in a minute. But first we’ll show you what John’s sister Emily’s front entryway has looked like for the past three years that she’s lived in her amazing casa (which you can virtually tour here). And here’s the after, thanks to a new color on the door and some semi-transparent stain on the deck that leads to it (oh yeah and some pumpkins). Here’s how we landed on the door color and the stain hue. First I came over with a bunch of paint swatches and we held them up to the door to see what would work with the smoky gray color of the house. We easily narrowed

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