Sherry Petersik - Young House Love: 243 Ways to Paint, Craft, Update & Show Your Home Some Love

YOUNG HOUSE LOVE

243 ways to Paint, Craft, update & SHOW Your Home SOME Love

sherry & john petersik

To Clara and Burger.

No house is complete without you.

Contents

Preface

Hi. Were Sherry and John Petersik (picture us tipping our hats to you with a not-smarmy grin). Fancy meeting you here. First off, thanks for picking up our book. And second of all, we kind of think youre awesome. And youre having a great hair day. But enough flattery. You might be wondering who the heck we are and what sort of impressive degrees or decades of formal training we have when it comes to renovating and decorating. The answer is none. Nada. Zilch. Picture a big ol goose egg in the design degree/formal training column.

See, when we began renovating and decorating our first home back in 2006, we were naive twenty-five-year-olds with a dream of turning our cute little 1,300-square-foot brick ranch in Richmond, Virginia, into a home that we loved. Initially the goal was just to make it not resemble a dark, wood-paneled hunting lodge with dated curtains and oppressive brick, but eventually we decided we could do even better than that, so our goal morphed into the desire to create a whole-house transformation that we could be proud of.

We searched in vain for a book that would fill our idea-hungry minds with suggestions for personalizing and falling in love with our home. Nothing too fancy and over-the-top for cheapos like us (yes, were happy to refer to ourselves as cheap) or full of info about box pleats and professional upholsterers (what are box pleats, anyway?). We just wanted a book to spark our imaginations and spur us on with ideas that we could actually implement in simple, not-intimidating-at-all language. Oh yeah, and we didnt have a bank account like The Donalds.

The den in our first house, before and after.

So accessible and doable ideas on a budget = the sweet spot. But tons of the home-makeover books we picked up led us to believe that this would be the biggest and most expensive project of our lives. Cue the sweaty palms. We wanted affordable ideas, but we couldnt settle for things that looked shoddy and amateur. Understandable, right? Basically, we wanted cheap that didnt look cheap. Luxe for less, if you will.

The kitchen, before and after.

Sadly, we left the bookstore empty-handed. So we just decided to jump in and get started. To learn as we went and course-correct along the way. To tackle one small project at a time to avoid becoming cash poor and woefully overwhelmed. And to break down big projects into a series of bite-sized chunks. Over time we gained confidence and expertise. (Heres where you can start imagining the Rocky music playing in the background.) Were proud to say that over the past five years, not only did we completely transform that first house of ours and live to tell the tale, but we also hosted our very own completely DIY wedding in the backyard of our beloved casa.

Our living room, before and after.

And in 2010 we took our three-person family (yes, we count Hamburger, our nine-pound Chihuahua, as a person) to four when we welcomed a sweet baby girl named Clara.

A few months after completing our best DIY project to date (that would be our daughter), we sold our completely overhauled first house to move into another needs-lots-of-work home. It was sad to leave our first love behind, but it was also insanely exciting.

Why? Because were bad at sitting on our hands and were downright giddy to start the entire crazy/fun journey of taking an old seen-better-days house and turning it into a holy-buckets-we-love-it home all over again. And this time we got to do it with our pooch and our baby by our side.

If you recognize our cheesy mugs, you might be familiar with our blog, Young House Love (younghouselove.com). Back in 2007 we started our online DIY diary of sorts just to chronicle our home-related adventures for friends and family. We didnt know a thing about blog coding or site maintenance, which was about as much as we knew about renovating and decorating. Somehow it blossomed into a bustling little site that has now become a full-time job for both of us. As in, we blog about all of the house-related projects we take on (the trials, tribulations, failures, and victories) to the world at large like its our job. Because it is our job. And nobodys more surprised than we are that we have regular followers. And not just our moms and dads, but people we dont even know. To the tune of about 5 million hits a month. Crazytown. So heres where we stop to send out a big, wet kiss to everyone who stops in to see what were up to. Love you. Mean it.

When the opportunity to write a book presented itself, we immediately knew what we wanted to do. Well, not immediately. First we pinched ourselves and squealed like tweens for about forty-eight hours. Then we got unbelievably intimidated and considered saying no to avoid probable humiliation. But after a week of letting it sink in, we got it together and began acting like normalish human beings again. (Okay, anyone who knows us is probably guffawing at the idea that we just called ourselves normalish.) Anyway, the point is that we eventually started toying with the idea that we could write the book that we always wanted to buy. And were not gonna lie, it got us all sorts of excited.

We loved the idea of tossing out a ton of suggestions for others who were feeling stuck or uninspired or just plain overwhelmed with the state of their home. You know, things that worked for us, stuff we learned along the way, and both classic ideas and more specific DIY projects in the hope that others would fall just as hopelessly in love with their four walls as we had with ours. And with that, we set out to write a book full of doable, affordable, not intensely intimidating ideas to take any house to the next level. Basically, its the exact book that we looked for back when we were just starting out on this whole making-our-house-a-home journey six years ago.

So after 2,190 days of living, learning, and tackling a major home makeover almost entirely on our own (and then excitedly embarking on another one), here it is. That book. I guess were such suckers for DIY that we decided to tackle it ourselves. And we hope itll come in handy for anyone out there who is looking to make their house a bit more homey (and less homely). Because we can totally relate to the feeling of being clueless, sweaty-palmed homeowners on the fateful day when youre handed the keys. Gosh, that feels like yesterday.

Without further ado (well, there might be a bit more ado, but sooner or later well get on with it), were excited to share a smattering of the crazy thoughts, tips, and ideas that swirl around in our project-lovin minds. You know, the ones that get us excited to pick up the ol hammer slash paintbrush slash staple gun slash glue gun slash something else in our toolbox or craft drawer. So youre cordially invited to join us in DIY adventureland and learn as you go, right along with us, because we always say that its just as much about the journey as it is the destination, and figuring things out as you go is more than half the fun. Heck, were still doing that every day, and well be right there with you on this little road trip through DIYville. So hop in the car. Well even let you have shotgun.