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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Updating Our Living Room With A New Rug

There’s something about being nearly a year into living here that makes it feel like we’ve accomplished a fair amount of “evolution” over the last 357 days (not that I’m counting…). I guess it’s because living somewhere for a month isn’t really a lot of time for tweak-age, but twelve of those in a row – well, it’s enough time to get things going. Like living with a floor plan for 11 months (just to be suuuuure) and then knocking out a wall that we’ve wanted gone from day one: It’s also enough time to make a few furniture and accessory changes as we transition from working with what we have (like random stuff carried

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How To Make An Advent Calendar

We’re still working away on the kitchen, so we’ll have update post #561 for you soon (kidding, it’s probably more like #19 or something – but still). This week we’re hoping to share lots of major progress (new counters and a working sink again – finally!). In the meantime, it’s about time we got into the holiday spirit. There’s just something special about spending our first real Christmas in our new house that makes us want to go all out. We moved on the 13th of December last year, so we were technically here for last year’s holiday season, but we were living out of boxes and Clara was too young to really get excited

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How To Turn Family Sketches Into Art

Dude, my dad is an artist. I mean not by trade (he’s a super-genius math teacher), but both he and my mother sketched and drew for fun during my childhood (in turn art was my favorite subject in school and off I went to get a bachelor of fine arts in NYC). I remember being in complete awe about how my mom drew horses and ladies while I loved how my dad drew all sorts of abstract shapes that filled a page with lines and dots and squares. Sort of like this. So about a week ago I was standing in the frame hallway thinking about my dad and his awesome drawings and realized that

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Hanging A Gallery Frame Wall In The Nursery

Some nursery tweak-age has occurred. And because we’re currently working away on the kitchen (stay tuned for those deets tomorrow morning if all goes well), we figured that we owed you the whole gallery-frame-change rundown (along with some well overdue what’s-in-that-frame answers). We’ve always loved the idea of expanding Clara’s art wall as she grows with more and more frames, so here’s how it looked before: And here’s what we have going on now that we’ve added a few more frames to the mix (and shifted the placement of a few of the existing ones): And for those who have been wondering, here’s a quick rundown of the things that we’ve framed (you can find

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How We Got A Book Agent, Wrote A Proposal, & Landed A Book Deal

We promised you guys a post all about the whole book-deal process back in March (when we spilled the beans about our upcoming book here). And the only reason I can think of that it has taken us this long to write is because we’ve been so busy actually writing our 260+ page book behind the scenes along with juggling the bambino and the blog and all of the projects that go along with those things. Haha. So forgive us for the delay. Many of you guys expressed an interest in how it all went down (a few years ago we never would have known how to navigate the waters of book proposals and agents

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White Corian Counter Templating

Not sure if many people are reading today (due to the impending turkey-related holiday) but we wanted to stop in with a quick kitchen update. We officially got our counters templated (aka: measured so they can be fabricated and installed within the next hopefully two weeks). And this finally means our sinkless days are finally numbered. Huzzah! For anyone who missed the counter discussion, here’s what we’re getting. When they came out to template we did learn that we would need reinforcement to support the 12″ overhang on two sides of the peninsula, so they quoted us $300 to build in some steel rods when they fabricate the counter or offered up the DIY option

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Thanksgiving Table Setting Ideas

I’m a last minute gal, what can I say? I’ve been having some fun with a few quick n’ random turkey-day table settings, so I thought I’d share ’em (with 48 whole hours before Thanksgiving to spare). I usually do a bunch of Christmas ones (as seen here) but something about the new doorway between the kitchen and the dining table has me itching to play around with pretty table settings a little early this year. Well, I did do some Thanksgiving table stuff last year and the year before, so I guess it’s becoming a tradition to just use what I have and see what I can come up with. Maybe they’ll help one or

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How To Remove Old Wood Kitchen Cabinets

Our cabinets are like Chumbawumba… they get knocked down. Well, they weren’t actually knocked down as much as they were “carefully removed” (since we plan to reuse various things like the doors for the new peninsula cabinets and then donate the rest). The room was feeling pretty wood-riddled when we moved in last December… … so we were excited to un-wood-riddle-it for good. As we mentioned here and here, we’ll be adding a wall of counter-to-ceiling penny tile… … along with a bit of open shelving (on either side of the range hood that we’ll be building in). Oh and to avoid having the open shelves/dust & grease chat again, just check out this post

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A Few Thrift Store Finds

I have been meaning to update you guys on four thrifty purchases (well, technically there are nine of them, because I got six of one thing) so let’s get into it. First we have this gilded pineapple vase that I found for $4 at Goodwill. Can you guess what I love most about it? Yup, the hex pattern all over the body of the vase. Even though it’s clearly pineapple influenced, it felt so “bees” to me (more on why we love bees here). And the antique gold finish is really pretty in person. Not too bright and shiny – it feels timeworn and authentic. And see those three jars around them? They were sent

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Octo-momma

Work continues on our big opening between the kitchen and the dining room which I still forget exists until I stumble into the room in the morning only to feel the sun shining in and break out in song and dance. No really, I do. It’s like a Disney movie around here. So while we deal with door jambs (and trim and a wooden ledge for the half-wall) we thought we’d introduce you to the latest member of our family. It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve added to my brood of white ceramic animals, so imagine my delight when John surprised me with this fine tentacled specimen: Apparently I mentioned that I was

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Knocking Out A Wall To Make A Large Cased Opening

After 330 days of living in darkness, we can fiiiinally see daylight in our kitchen. And it’s nothing short of ahhhhhmazing. This whole process took Licensed Contractor Steve and Right Hand Woman Tara almost seven hours of work (more on why we needed them, how we found them, and permit stuff here). Meanwhile John, Clara, and Burger hunkered down at his sister’s house to avoid the chaos and I stayed home to answer questions, offer up snacks/drinks, spy, drool, and live vicariously through them. They were amazing and we couldn’t be happier with the admittedly-still-very-raw but super-exciting-in-that-we-might-not-sleep-tonight result! Here’s how it all went down. Literally. Of course this is completely over-simplified (and obviously isn’t a

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Opening The Kitchen Wall To Make A Doorway

Other potential titles for this post: Holy Schnikies I (Almost) See The Light The Sweetest Sound = A Power Saw Best Day Ever!!!! This post could be called a tease but I like to consider it a keeping-you-posted thing. So many folks are wondering what’s going on around here, so a picture’s worth a thousand words, right? More pics and deets later! Psst- To anyone wondering about the vents, there’s more info on how we’ve dealt with those here. As for the electrical wire, ours guy’s coming out to get on that.

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