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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Our First Big Art Purchase

That’s what Clara said when she woke up and saw our freshly hung real art in the kitchen. It was cute. And we laughed. And then she squealed “She’s swimming! Look, fishies!” which are most definitely not in there, but the girl has quite an imagination. So hooray for imaginary fishies. I described this gal as “real art” because it’s actually our first big art purchase ever. It’s a large print of an original oil painting by an amazing Etsy artist that we just couldn’t get out of our mind. And at $195 it was definitely a splurge for folks like us who usually frame free art that we make ourselves or hunt thrift stores

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How To Make Colorful DIY Bookends

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! We’re celebrating with Burger, Clara, each other, and a photography crew in our house for the third straight week. But there’s a twist today: we’re trying not to vomit! Poor Clara got sick the entire evening on Saturday and into the morning on Sunday and now it appears that John and I have the bug… but the show must go on! The good news is that we finished all of our secret projects so we just have to get the last 20 in the can by Friday and we’re done-zo. Oh yeah and we’re supposed to shoot some cover shots tomorrow (ahhhhhhhhhhhh) but we won’t think about that right now. So

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Decorating Kitchen Shelves

Remember yesterday when our shelves looked like this? Well, then I had fun doing this (if you’re at work, you can watch this without sound and totally get the gist): If you check out the video you can see that I can actually reach everything up on those top shelves except for the stuff in the corner by the window, but it’s easy enough to sit on the counter to grab it. Who knew I’d be able to reach all that stuff? I totally expected to have to scream “Joooooohn” whenever I needed something up there (he’s the chef of the family so that probably wouldn’t have happened very often anyway). Or use a step

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DIY Tulip Bouquet

While we wait for our primed and painted open shelves to dry (ahhh, tomorrow is H-Day, aka: haaaanging day!) we realized that we’ve been waaaaay overdue for a budget blooms post. Remember when we used to do them every month? Yeah, we fell off. Oops. And a few of you have actually requested them, which is just what the doctor ordered since book chaos + kitchen chaos = a hankering for a sliver of beauty in a completely trashed house like ours. Seriously, it looks crazier than it did the day we moved in. Bed in the living room? Check. Painting and repainting a five foot swatch of wall in the playroom different colors every

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Laundry Room & Mudroom Organization

It’s time for this week’s installment of my strange little self-imposed “Dude Get On That Already” challenge (where I’m attempting to use or donate/craigslist all the random items that we’ve been hoarding in our full-of-stuff playroom). When I laid eyes on this old bar o’ coat hooks that used to hang in our first house’s den, I thought it might be just the thing for our laundry room. Clara’s coats & hats & gloves + Burger’s leash = lots of small things that might be easier to grab/find if we actually had somewhere to hang them. So first we made sure it would fit by holding it up where we thought we could hang it.

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How To Patch And Spackle Ceiling Holes

Holey moley. Our ceiling was having a little hole problem after some electrical wizork last week (warning: $herdog is in full effect in this post)… So we did the normal thing and donned sunglasses and hats along with breathing masks. Why? Because we can’t find our safety glasses (book shoots = can’t really find anything). And ceiling dust is gross when it’s up your nizzle. Then we got our patch on. I’m the designated Spackle Wench in our family, but John has longer arms, so he helped me by doing step one: lightly sanding the outside of the holes we were patching. Then it was time for these guys from Home Depot. They’re basically a

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A Giant Rooster In The Kitchen

Me. I’ve actually been hiding this $12 HomeGoods find in our playroom for… oh… five months? So it was about time I attended to him. Yup, this guy’s part of the self-imposed initiative I like to call the “Dude Get On That Already” challenge, since I’ve solemnly vowed to use it or lose it (aka: use it or craigslist/donate it) when it comes to all the things we’ve been hoarding in our full-to-the-brim playroom. At first glance you might think “he’s a fine looking roughly weathered white & tan rooster” (or “you need ceramic animal rehab” which could also be true) but I thought his distressed white finish was a little more country than my

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How To Deal With Criticism

It was fun to crack open a little bit of our personal “stuff” last Tuesday for this post about the real $herdog (yes, I’m still patiently waiting for that nickname to catch on) and John’s J-Boom version. And a funny thing happened after sharing those. Not only did they receive over 1,200 amazingly awesome and encouraging comments (note to self: apparently you’re not a social pariah if you admit that you sometimes have strawberry cream cheese on your ear and are inclined to impersonate Cindy Lou Who) but we also got dozens of emails – not even exaggerating – asking about how to deal with criticism and respond to negative comments. And thus this post

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Hanging Two Glass Kitchen Pendants

I like big globes and I cannot lie. You other brothers can’t deny. When a light walks in with an itty bitty waist… … and a round thing in yo face you get sprung. At least I do. John just gets all blown out and looks angelic. The purpose of that photo was actually just to show you why we picked the height that we did. The common pendant light recommendation is to hang it 30″ above the top of the counter (from the top of the counter to the base of the pendant), but we went 31″  because my tall hubby didn’t want those round things in his face obstructing the view. It’s so

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Finding A Jenn-Air Hood Range On Sale From Craigslist

Woot. We did it. We found a stainlesss steel range hood on craigslist. It’s an industrial strength pro JennAir one (valued at around $350) but we got it for… $60! Oh craigslist, I could kiss you on the mouth. The listing said $65, but you know I did the old “how about sixty, we have cash?!” thing when we got there and looked it over… and… sold! It definitely appeared to be purchased but never used (it still had some of the white sticky peel-off stuff on the underside that new hoods have) – although it didn’t look like it had been kept completely protected while it was being stored (there are some scratches on

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Planning Electrical Upgrades During A Kitchen Renovation

Remember when we shared how shiny and polished our kitchen started to look after we finished grouting?   And then revealed the chaos that ensued a hot minute later? Well, the room is all put back together and we made a whole lotta lighting cha-cha-changes. Sure our ceiling looks like swiss cheese. But it’s all for a good cause. Inching towards a more luminescent kitchen. Everyone says that lighting can make the room, but I’m here to refute that. Just kidding, it totally makes the room. If you have a gorgeous space but it looks dark or yellowed or all angry and fluorescent, well, it kinda ruins the whole effect. So we knew something had

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Finishing Lingering Home Projects

We have a new friend hanging out in our kitchen. I found this guy at Hobby Lobby during one of their all-the-time 50% off sales for $12. You know me and faux animals. Faux sho they’re mine. Then he sat in our playroom for a while (a while = 6+ months) and I recently walked in there and had this moment where I said to myself “Self: you have got to stop hoarding things in this room. Use them or lose them.” Which led to an initiative I like to call “Dude, Get On That Already.” The dude being me. Naturally. So I’ll probably revisit this initiative over the next few weeks and months (at

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