Lovable livable home : how to add beauty, get organized, and make your house work for you

416 Pages·2015·26.46 MB·English

by  Petersik

lovable
LIVABLE
HOME
How to Add Beauty, Get Organized, and Make Your
House Work for You
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.
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Living Spaces
Eating Spaces
Sleeping Spaces
Washing Spaces
Entry Spaces
Working Spaces
Playing Spaces
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Source List
Photo Credits
Index
About the Authors
PREFACE
Hey there. We’re 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 we’ve ever felt fancy in our lives. Okay, maybe that time we got
cable in our bedroom. That felt pretty crème de la crème.
But in all seriousness, we’re 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 home’s 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 weren’t 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 adored—a sweet 1,300-square-foot haven that worked awesomely well for the way
we lived. It wasn’t 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.
It’s what gave us the home renovation bug and led us to tackle two more home makeovers as our
family grew. And it’s what planted the idea for this book deep in our brains: to show that it’s 100
percent possible to create a beautiful and meaningful home that’s 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 don’t have to sacrifice function for
beauty or cover everything in plastic wrap to make it jelly-proof. So if you’re ready to let your hair
down a little, we’re right there with you. There just might be a little paint in ours.

INTRODUCTION
Lovable and livable is just about the sweetest sweet spot your home can hit. Sure,
there might be other adjectives you’re hoping to check off too, like colorful, modern,
luxe, or bootylicious. But at the end of the day, what’s the point of a gorgeous
backdrop if you can’t 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.
We’ve 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. You’ll 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 there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to creating a home, you’ll 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 home’s livability and, well, lovability is that
everyone’s definition is different. Your mailman or your work friends don’t have to find your house
lovely or livable (in fact, aiming for mass appeal is usually a surefire way to ensure that your home
isn’t nearly as charming or functional for you as it could be). And because tastes and style
preferences vary wildly and it’s pretty much impossible to find a household that has exactly the same
needs and design challenges as yours, we’ve 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 divorce—it’s 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
family’s 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.