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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Eight Things We Did To Prepare For Our Baby’s Arrival

With just seven days until my actual due date (although we’re pretty sure Baby P will make us wait even longer), we’ve officially begun getting ready for her arrival. Of course you’ve seen us tackling her nursery, but now when we say getting ready, we really mean getting-ready-for-my-water-to-break-and-to-actually-welcome-our-new-daughter-into-the-world. See, pretty much right after we found out I was pregnant we slowly began to wrap our minds around the idea that our family would be growing as my belly continued to expand with every baked potato and chocolate milk craving. Now you see why I’ve been humming my tweak on an old Beyoncé classic: “I don’t think you’re ready for this belly.” And only quite recently

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Organizing Old Photos In Numbered Albums

Maybe it’s the whole organize-everything-because-it’s-spring thing or even a bit of last minute nesting, but lately I’ve been all about whipping things into submission. As in, finding a place for every last paperclip and utensil… even putting every single one of our photos into coordinated leather albums and chronologically numbering them. Yeah, it’s a little crazy but I’ve always been a nerd for organization. And looking at those nice little hand-numbered tags just makes me smile. It’s the little things, right? The first stage of the project was to go through all my mismatched old falling-apart albums (and stacks of sad album-less photos) and put them all in chronological order. Then I grabbed some nice-enough-but-not-bank-breaking

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Budget Blooms: May Madness

As most of you know, every month we like to enjoy one inexpensive- and sometimes free- bouquet to keep things feeling fresh around here (the idea actually stemmed from a super sweet Christmas present from the hubs a while back). But this month we got lucky. Nope, not with a free backyard bouquet, but with the photo shoot that we mentioned this morning… which involved a cooler full of flowers provided by the prop stylist, many of which weren’t even touched when the cameras were being packed away. And what did that ever-amazing prop stylist do? She offered all the floral outcasts to us as she left. Did I mention said prop stylist happens to

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Behind The Scenes: Our Friday Photo Shoot

We’re back to share the “backstage” details of our recent photo shoot with the crew from BHG for Do It Yourself magazine and Kitchen + Bath Makeovers (with our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom playing the stars of the show). Let’s just say it was a day full of prepping, propping, shooting, eating, secretly high fiving when no one was looking (ok, that was just me and John), and standing around staring as the masters worked their magic (again, that was just me and John). And we had a lot to stare at. There were large panels of fabric to soften any outside light, big worth-more-than-our-house camera lenses, and computers hooked up

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A House Full Of DIY Projects

When Kara from Made 2 Create invited us to crash her Tulsa, Oklahoma house we decided that even though we couldn’t make the trek over there in person we needed to virtually cover her casa. Because it’s just that good. And to preface this amazing house tour we should mention that almost everything you’ll see in Kara’s gorgeous home came from a garage sale, Craigslist or she and her hubby Tim made it with their own four hands. Now let’s meet Kara the handy homeowner herself: And now that we have the formalities out of the way, let’s poke around inside. Kara built a faux fireplace to create a focal point and put her favorite

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A DIY Baby Mobile With Folded Moravian Stars

When Isabel and Thomas sent over some photos of their DIY mobile project (which was reminiscent of the one that we featured in this nursery makeover of yore) we had to share the eye candy. Here’s their letter: You’ve inspired yet another project, and since you’ve recently completed your nursery I thought this was timely. I learned how to make folded Moravian Stars from a tutorial online (in three different sizes, all in a variety of patterns I printed myself). I used this site and this site for reference, although the former is better. My husband invented the actual “hangers” for the mobile. He’s amazing! So with nothing more than paper, scissors, Mod Podge, a

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An Amazing Kitchen Reno For $8000

You guys have to remember Krystol thanks to the amazing porch makeover that she sent our way a while back. Well, she’s done it again. And her kitchen is nothing short of fantastic (not to mention budget friendly). Here’s her letter: Thank you so much for posting our porch reno on your blog. I was so amazed at the response and wanted to share our latest project: the kitchen reno. We ripped out everything right down to the studs and started over with new Ikea cabinets, new appliances, a new laminate counter and my favorite: a zinc topped work island which we made by “wrapping” the top half of an MDF sheet with zinc that

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Painting The Back Of A Glass Kitchen Cabinet

As many of you know, I recently snagged some affordable drinking glasses that we love so much, which spurred a full fledged glass-fronted cabinet makeover here at Casa Petersik. Here’s what our glass fronted corner cabinet looked like before my little spring update: We love that it was full of plates, glasses and bowls that we use all the time (we’re all about enjoying our servingware on a regular basis so nothing feels too precious or underused) so of course when I picked up those new glasses I made a promise to John that they wouldn’t be tucked away for “special occasions” and that we’d use them on the regular. And what better way to

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Two Magazine Photoshoots At Our House

It’s a crazy-but-we-wouldn’t-have-it-any-other-way day here at Casa Petersik. We actually have a photography crew from BHG here (!) to shoot our newly transformed nursery and our recently renovated bathroom for two different publications: Kitchen + Bath Makeovers and Do It Yourself magazine. Fun, right? We’re all geeked out about it. We’re super excited to watch the stylists work their propping magic (how do they make bottles of soap look so good?) and we actually know the photographer Erik Johnson since he shot the rest of our house a while back for a three-issue article in Do It Yourself (see them here, here, and here). In fact here we are with Erik and the crew from

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Finding Colorful Glass Cups On Sale

Many of you know that I have a giant binder full of clear plastic sleeves where I shove a ton of tear sheets from magazines, catalogs and other places that inspire me (read more about how I organize that magical binder right here). And one ripped corner of a magazine that has been in my binder pretty much since its inception has been an image from Elle Decor with gorgeous vintage looking glasses in green, yellow, blue and pink with recessed designs on them that create a light and almost sea-glass-ish effect. They’re credited as being from this super swanky store (which doesn’t happen to have a shot of them on their site- boo) and

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Painting A Wood China Cabinet White And Adding Fabric To The Back Wall

When Emily sent us her amazing china cabinet makeover we just had to share her before & after pics. Here’s her letter: I’ve been following your blog and have been inspired to move away from a house full of dark furniture and lighten things up a bit! We had some dark $10 clearance dining chairs that we purchased last summer but we decided to give them an airy overhaul (we found discount fabric and payed a professional to paint and upholster the chairs and they still came in under $100 a piece!). We also had been on the lookout for a china cabinet to store all of our servingware (which was sadly being stored in

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Making Graphic Art Prints With A Paint Pen

When Liz sent her DIY art project our way we couldn’t wait to share the outcome with you guys. Here’s her letter: I know that you guys are always whipping up fab DIY art, so I thought your readers might enjoy this little art project that I did. We’ve had a wall in our den that has been blank for over a year. Finally I decided to spend an evening making a fun and funky little art series that has added some much-needed interest to that wall. The best part is that it couldn’t have been easier. If you can wield a paint pen, you can definitely take on this project! In short: I painted

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