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.

| By | | 246 Comments

Thrifting In The Outer Banks

For those not in the know (like me five years ago), OBX = The Outer Banks. Which is actually where John first took me for our one year anniversary of dating. Cue the collective aw. Anyway, now that we divulged some details of our recent Outer Banks trip this morning, we wanted to share all of the house-related stuff that we found while we were there. One of our favorite things to do when we travel is search for thrift stores, so I just did a quick hunt for “thrift” on my iPhone and it led us to Hotline Thrift (in Kitty Hawk – it’s a big pink store, you can’t miss it). Which is

[ Read More ]

| By | | 269 Comments

Window Shopping At Home Goods

A few months ago HomeGoods came a lot closer to home. Hence the celebratory “holla” in the title of this post. Yeah, I’m psyched. The closest location used to be in Short Pump (about twenty five minutes from our house) but a new one recently opened right in Chesterfield Towne Center (a mall that’s about eight minutes from our door). Score. So we thought it would be fun to run around with our camera and take some photos of whatever caught our eye (just like we occasionally do at Target, Ikea, and even the other HomeGoods location). Let’s go virtual shopping, shall we? This cheerful turquoise bench ($150) caught my attention right away. Apparently Mr.

[ Read More ]

| By | | 148 Comments

An Easy Porch Update For Curb Appeal

Hope you guys all had an awesome holiday weekend. We had some fun with our family (more on that later in the week) and are still sort of building up the ol’ momentum again (after our big paneling project from last week) – but we did manage to squeeze in a tiny porch upgrade. See, when we were house hunting in the late fall of last year we snapped these two terrible shots of the porch: Then on moving day we plopped down the wooden bench (from Home Depot a few years back) which used to live on our first house’s front porch… and that was the extent of the update. Blah. Pretty bleak huh?

[ Read More ]

| By | | 2 Comments

June Superlatives

Note: This is a retroactive post that I cobbled together in December of 2011 so I could make this page full of monthly recaps for the entire year (our first in our new house!). Yup, I’m just a bit type A. So here’s what we tackled throughout the month of June – high school yearbook style. Most Improved: Finally painting our kitchen paneling Most Annoying: Priming the paneling (which took more than a few tries) Most Destructive: Removing a few cabinets & patching the floor (to make way for our impending paneling makeover) Most Goal Oriented: Announced a new initiative to clear the kitchen table of miscellaneous clutter every night before bed (we’re still hit

[ Read More ]

| By | | 854 Comments

How We Painted Our Wood Paneling

About a week ago (after we painted our brick fireplace) our kitchen looked like this: Then we removed the desk and upper cabinet (that will be in the way of our big future doorway to the dining room) and after one coat of not-covering-at-all primer it looked like this: Then we finally got the primer thing right after dealing with maddening bleed-through issues thanks to two days of applying coat after coat and three different types of primer (more on that here): And now it looks like this, although it reads a bit more yellow in these photos than in person (it’s a smidge greener in real life). It’s definitely a warm golden green tone

[ Read More ]

| By | | 638 Comments

Priming Our Wood Paneling

And now, for the dang paneling update. Hold on to your hats ladies and gents. This post = wild ride. As you probably know, we’re no strangers to priming and painting paneling. Sure we could remove the paneling, but it would mean removing and rehanging all the cabinets since they’re hung in front of it – and revealing goodness knows how many scary issues behind it (they’re old plaster walls so that just felt like a big ol’ can o’ worms). And we could attempt to drywall over it (but it would mean drywalling around the existing cabinets and a lot more expense/trouble than just painting it). So we decided early on that we’d once

[ Read More ]

| By | | 186 Comments

Tips For Hosting A House Party

Paneling = oy. Update tomorrow. But while we’re here… Can you believe that Clara’s b-day bash was the largest party (weighing in at 25 attendees) that we’ve thrown since our backyard wedding almost four years ago? How lame of us. And I know, it’s been over a month – enough already about the party. But since a lot of our posts are actually just notes to self (how else would we remember what color we painted our old bedroom?) we figured we better record what we lizz-earned now (or forever hold our peace forget it all). 1. Keep the focus on a few carefully selected rooms (and don’t put stuff for guests to peruse in

[ Read More ]

| By | | 169 Comments

A Beautiful Office Full Of Inspiration

The bleeping paneling is taking a wee bit longer than we expected. Le sigh. Hopefully we’ll have an update for you soon. In the meantime… Every once in a while a shop or office inspires us so much that we decide to crash it (just like we did when it came to this fun kids consignment shop). And we weaseled our way into this office space for Towne & Reese (a jewelry company named after two Charlotte ladies’ kids) thanks to a house crashing adventure from a few years back. You have to remember this one, right? Here are a few shots to jog your memory: And here’s a pic of the cute couple with

[ Read More ]

| By | | 257 Comments

Junk Drawer Organization

Sometimes one big drawer of junk isn’t nearly as easy to navigate as two smaller drawers full of half the junk each. So in that vein I decided to transfer all of the stuff out of our double-wide junk drawer, which has gotten increasingly “rowdy.” Especially in comparison to the obedient glasses, mugs, and vases in the upper cabinet: We have some completely empty smaller drawers on the other side of the kitchen near the office which should do the trick. We’re blessed to have more storage than we know what to do with in this kitchen – and putting this stuff near the office is so much easier since we use 99% of it

[ Read More ]

| By | | 324 Comments

How To Use Weed Blocking Fabric

Yeah, we’re those neighbors. You know, the ones who are so busy working on the inside of the house (slash baby-wrangling) that our yard is looking a little worse for wear. Check out the weed convention taking place under our mailbox: And hark, who is that sweet little guy peering out of the overgrown insanity? Why it’s a sweet iron squirrel left by the previous owners. And yes, I do love him and occasionally pet him. His name is Norman. So the first step of the whole mailbox makeover was clearly to weed. For the first time in half a year. Yup, other than this mom-assisted weeding event, we haven’t done it at all since

[ Read More ]

| By | | 539 Comments

How To Make Ikea Curtains Look Good

That’s how many yards I knew I’d need to make eight living room curtains. It generally breaks down to five yards of fabric per window (or sliding door) for two floor-length curtains that I can hang high and wide over each one. So five yards times four windows/sliders = eight panels (two for the big back window, two for each of the two sliding doors to the right as you face the window, and two for the sliding door to the left (that leads out onto this balcony to nowhere). So that’s where the whole 20 yards thing came from. And yeah for those who can’t picture it, that’s a lot of fabric (60 feet

[ Read More ]

| By | | 121 Comments

A Neutral Living Room With Citrus Accents

It feels like years since I made my last mood board (you can see over 125 of them here). What the heck is up with that? So I’m breaking the dry spell with this just-for-fun creation that I tossed together with some cheerful and sunny summer color. I wanted to pick some fun accessories that anyone with a neutral toned sofa and neutral colored walls could use as a springboard for pulling together a room with a warm, happy, and inviting vibe: 1. The color palette for the room is full of warm tones like sunny orange and yellow along with some rich dark wood tones, some basic neutrals like mocha and tan, and glossy

[ Read More ]