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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Making A House Hunting Wish List

First off, my cheeky hubby has decided he’s deserving of a public “you were right.” So here it is. Check out this video from a year ago where he calls that we’ll move someday while I vehemently deny it (skip to 5 minutes and 45 seconds). Who’s married to a know it all? This girl (points to self with thumbs). Before I climbed on the moving bandwagon UHaul with my smarty pants spouse, we rethought a bunch of potential layout adjustments to this house and even entertained the idea of an addition instead (which we also tossed out as an option in the above video over a year ago). But the fact that the already-here

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Halloween Decorating With Crows, Candles and Skull Photos

Halloween is in just a few short weeks so we broke out the old creepy raven along with a bunch of other spook-tastic props from last year (see our big Halloween ’09 set up here). And other than springing for some candy for the kids in our neighborhood and some candy corn for ourselves we didn’t spend a dime (hindsight: candy corn is the worst- it’s basically just a stomach ache waiting to happen). Oh and we grabbed some $4 carnations too. So here’s the console table all decked out: Nothing too fancy, just a piece of burlap as a casual runner with things like some eerily titled books that we dug up along with

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An Inspired & Inexpensive House Tour

After Jordan and Landon shared their amazingly affordable (and drop dead gorgeous) kitchen overhaul with us (here), we definitely were left wanting more. So when they offered up the opportunity to House Crash them, we said “uh… yes please.” And we figured since it’s their house they’d be the best at showing you around, so we’re passing the virtual mic over to them for the tour while we clean our house within an inch of it’s life in an effort to woo a few more potential buyers this weekend (fingers crossed). Enjoy the tour! Welcome to our home in Columbia, South Carolina! We’re Jordan & Landon from landonjacob.com. You’ve already seen the kitchen (here), but

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Decluttering Tips To Try Before A House Showing

How do we learn around these parts? By doing. And sometimes by panicking. So when someone called us to see our house out of the blue, and wanted to drop by in an hour, we panicked. But only for five to ten minutes. Then we used the other 50 minutes to do the ahh-someone’s-coming-to-look-at-our-house shuffle. Luckily the house was already pretty clean since we knew we would be showing it sooner or later. But what about that recommended pairing down step to reduce clutter and make cabinets and closets look bigger (so you don’t seem like you’re bursting at the seams)? Here’s how that went: Step 1: Take two large plastic bags (ideally big black

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Farah’s Living Room Makeover: We’re Done!

Here’s where we explain the second half of Farah’s home makeover (click here to read our first post on the subject). Basically HomeGoods offered us some free merch for our house and we asked if we could pay it forward and transform someone else’s casa instead. Unbelievably they agreed. And we decided that we couldn’t stop at just sprucing up Farah’s mom cave after we laid eyes on her family room. So we have another before and after for all you transformation loving fiends. Here’s her cute family again, just to refresh your memory. And here’s their family room before: Here’s the same room after we got our mitts on it: It was pretty much

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Word To Your Motha Cave

Move over man cave, this post is all about a mom cave. When HomeGoods contacted us to offer us a gift card to create a mom cave in our house, we asked if we could pay it forward instead. And they were game. Oh and then we asked what the heck a mom cave was. It’s actually a little haven for any mom in her own home. The mom’s answer to the man cave if you will. It can just be a small corner of a bedroom with a chair for relaxing and reading or an entire room devoted to crafting, pedicuring, or anything else that your little mom heart desires. So I set out

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We’re Selling Our House

Holy bananas. We just stuck the For Sale sign in front of our house (the one in this post was photoshopped in case you couldn’t tell). Big day. So it’s official. Our house is really on the market. We’re still in the process of doing a ton of things to woo potential buyers both inside and out (stay tuned for those details as we go) and we’re actually trying the for-sale-by-owner route… at least for a little while. Being such big DIYers it seemed odd not to give it a go (especially since my mom and dad have sold nearly every house they’ve ever owned themselves). Although we’re definitely not opposed to turning to a

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Using Gourds To Make Fall Decor

Yes, that was a gourd pun. Although I must admit that my all time favorite post title ever was Oh My Gourd (see that post here). Anyway, in case you couldn’t tell, this post is about gourds. I like injecting a little seasonal interest into our home in a few fun and inexpensive ways (think Halloween decor like this and Thanksgiving decor like this). And given my love of all things white and ceramic I couldn’t help myself when we came across these faux gourds at JoAnn Fabrics for 50% off their $2.99 price tag (so I grabbed all five for $7.45). Then I spray painted the heck out of them with some white glossy

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Blogiversary III: Goal Tending

Every year when our blogiversary rolls around, we like to take a moment to outline our goals. So it’s time to officially state three things that we’re going to work really hard to accomplish over the next 365 days. After all, there’s nothing like a public proclamation to light a fire under the ol’ buns. So enough chit-chat. Here are the three biggest things on our list (speaking of big, check out my ridiculous calves). Goal Numero Uno: Move On- As we recently shared, we’re saying peace out to our lovely and amazing casa. It’s definitely bittersweet, but we can’t wait to get our mitts on something new-to-us and shine it up like a lucky

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Blogiversary III: Our Days Are Numbered

For every blogiversary that rolls around we like to have some mathy fun with numbers to break down some funny (and admittedly horrifying) facts when it comes to all things YHL. 1527- Our number of published posts to date (crazy considering we only had 380 on our first blogiversary) 258,904- The number of comments we’ve amassed from you, our lovely readers 13,039- The number of comment questions that we’ve answered to date (we do our best to answer every single one) 4- Number of people who live in our house (counting Burger, who thinks he’s a person) 3- The number of days we were in the hospital after Clara was born 0- The number of

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Blogiversary III: On The Move

And now for some news that falls in the “big” category: we’re in the market for a new Casa Petersik. That’s right, after tons of thoughtful deliberation we’ve decided that it’s time to sell our current home after four and a half amazing years spent here. Why? Because we love a project and we’re can’t-sleep-excited about the prospect of taking on a new home makeover and sharing every moment with you guys. We know it’s a sickness, but we actually crave remodeling and painting projects, so instead of feeling overwhelmed at the idea of starting all over again we’re actually pretty psyched about it. Of course it’s bittersweet to leave the place that we love

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Behind The Scenes Of Running A Blog

Q: I know this might be a bit on the personal side, but I’ve always wondered what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to running a successful blog. I’m sure a lot of readers just think you write up posts and conquer home improvement projects but from owning my own small business I know all about the “maintenance” (like taxes, health insurance, business licenses, etc). I don’t know if it’s something you’re willing to talk about but I’m sure there are a lot of other aspiring small business owners and bloggers who would like to learn about everything that goes into keeping YHL going. Thanks so much for the daily inspiration and all

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