Popular Home Blog Performs Holiday Makeover Miracle at Children’s Hospital

RICHMOND, Va. — As part of Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU’s  12 Days of Holiday Cheer, they enlisted the help of popular home bloggers and New York Times best-selling authors, Young House Love. The nationally-recognized bloggers, who call Richmond, Va. home, generously agreed to help CHoR #SpreadCheer to patients and families spending their holidays in the hospital by performing a holiday makeover miracle on the hospital’s family care center room. The duo took on the challenge, hoping to use their design skills to give the room a homey touch while adding some festive elements for the holiday season.

But Young House Love quickly learned designing a hospital space came with a lot more challenges and restrictions than their own family room. Safety and sanitary concerns weren’t the only challenge for the design duo. With the holidays quickly approaching, they only had three work days to complete the entire makeover project, which included painting, building a custom chalkboard, decorating a Christmas tree, creating a fake fireplace and hanging window treatments, among other DIY projects.

“This was the hardest but most rewarding design challenge we have ever faced,” said Sherry Petersik of Young House Love. “There were so many unique challenges that really required us to get creative, but we were so happy with the final outcome. We enjoyed the opportunity to #SpreadCheer to these kids and families during the holidays!”

Young House Love finished the project just in time. Click here for the final reveal. To follow Young House Love’s lead and #SpreadCheer, CHoR is asking others to commit an act of holiday cheer by:

• Visiting their Facebook page and sharing their six-word plan to #SpreadCheer during the holidays
• Texting HEALTH to 50555 to donate $10 to children in the hospital

They’re hoping to reach 1,200 acts of cheer by Dec. 31. For more information about the 12 Days of Holiday Cheer, follow Children’s Hospital of Richmond on Facebook and read the #SpreadCheer blog posts with six-word messages of cheer from some of CHoR’s patients and staff.