Petersik John - Lovable livable home: how to personalize, organize, and beautify every room in your house

Sherry & John Petersik
of YOUNG HOUSE LOVE

New York

To Clara, Teddy, and Burger, who bring chaos, crumbs, and so much joy to our home.

Hey there. Were Sherry and John, and welcome to our book! Actually, welcome to our second book. I know. That sounds fancy. But fancy is probably the least accurate word to describe us (well, that and maybe marsupial). Not sure weve ever felt fancy in our lives. Okay, maybe that time we got cable in our bedroom. That felt pretty crme de la crme.

But in all seriousness, were pretty much your average couple, raising two kids the best we can while trying to create a beautiful home where we all feel comfortable. The key difference between us and most typical families is that we spent seven years documenting those efforts for the world to see on our blog, Young House Love.

It started in 2007 as a do-it-yourself diary to share our first homes kitchen renovation with a few close family members and friends. Despite the fact that we had zero training in DIY, decorating, or even blogging, both our readership and our home projects grew and our little online home diary turned into one big, crazy ride. More than a million people were visiting our site every month. We wrote a best-selling book. We toured the country meeting fans. We designed products sold at places like Target and Home Depot. And we ended up in magazines and newspapers and on TV. Heck, Oprah even mentioned our names at one point (but sadly, they werent followed by the words You get a car!).

It was nothing short of insane to two regular Joes like us who simply fell in love with a house and the adventure of making it our own.

And love it we did. For more than four and a half years, we relished turning that fateful first home into a place we adoreda sweet 1,300-square-foot haven that worked awesomely well for the way we lived. It wasnt always easy (there was definitely a fair amount of sweat, tears, and whispered curse words), but that home renovation will go down in history as one of our favorite life adventures. Its what gave us the home renovation bug and led us to tackle two more home makeovers as our family grew. And its what planted the idea for this book deep in our brains: to show that its 100 percent possible to create a beautiful and meaningful home thats meant to be lived in and not just looked at.

Yes, after owning three homes with kids and a dog and more crumbs than seems legal (seriously, where do they come from?), we can confidently say that you dont have to sacrifice function for beauty or cover everything in plastic wrap to make it jelly-proof. So if youre ready to let your hair down a little, were right there with you. There just might be a little paint in ours.

Lovable and livable is just about the sweetest sweet spot your home can hit. Sure, there might be other adjectives youre hoping to check off too, like colorful, modern, luxe, or bootylicious. But at the end of the day, whats the point of a gorgeous backdrop if you cant settle in and really live there? Conversely, giving up on the idea of adding any semblance of beauty or charm and just defaulting purely to utility can lead to all-time-low levels of house satisfaction. Being able to love your surroundings and live well within them is the goal, and this book can help you make that happen.

Weve filled the following pages with ideas, projects, and makeovers about getting more organized, adding beauty, staying within your budget, and squeezing more function, meaning, and personality out of your home. Youll get to see how we accomplished some of those things in our own house (as well as in a few others), including everything from full-room before and afters, detailed step-by-step tutorials, and quick-and-easy projects you can try in your space.

And since we know theres no one-size-fits-all solution to creating a home, youll also find tips and pictures from dozens of other families with interesting and inspiring rooms. We have highlighted their home hurdles and how they solved them to make their space work for their family, which, in turn, might work for your home too.

Actually, one of our favorite things about a homes livability and, well, lovability is that everyones definition is different. Your mailman or your work friends dont have to find your house lovely or livable (in fact, aiming for mass appeal is usually a surefire way to ensure that your home isnt nearly as charming or functional for you as it could be). And because tastes and style preferences vary wildly and its pretty much impossible to find a household that has exactly the same needs and design challenges as yours, weve embraced that by featuring a wide variety of homes and families in these pages.

From big spaces to small ones, from homes with lots of kids, no kids, and furry kids to unique situations like frequent moves with the military, adapting a home for a wheelchair, altering a rental home without fear of losing the security deposit, and downsizing after divorceits all here. Seeing these amazing homes and talking to these fascinating families gave us a fresh appreciation for how diverse the definitions of lovable and livable are. We hope it emboldens you to make your home reflect your family even more and to make it work harder for everyone under your roof.

No book can promise to solve all of your decorating dilemmas or remedy every last one of your familys messes, but we do hope this one helps you check a few big ones off the list, while giving you permission to stop beating yourself up over the rest.

Theres lots of talk of form and function in the design world, but we tend to think that focusing only on how something looks or how it works leaves out a key part of what makes your house feel like home. Meaning. Thats whats missing. What does something mean to you? How does it make you feel?

Maybe its furniture that has been handed down from your grandparents, or a piece of art drawn by your child. You might even find meaning in a silly kinda-wonky-looking knickknack that you picked up on your honeymoon.

This is an important factor to remember, because putting meaningful things into our homes is what makes them uniquely lovable to us. It is what guarantees no home will look or feel the same.

This isnt to say that every item in your home must combine all three attributes to land in the middle of that sweet Venn diagram. Some things in a room may be strictly for looks, others purely for function, while still others solely for the smile they bring to your face. Its definitely extra credit if something checks off two boxesor even three on occasionbut as long as your rooms are full of items that are beautiful, functional, and meaningful, well, thats pretty much the feel-at-home holy grail.