Guest Post - House Pretty

Another busy day for us! Halle and I are heading to the hospital this afternoon to squeeze in a visit with our friend and her tiny new baby who was born a week ago! Then, tonight B's parents arrive from Massachusetts - their first visit with the munchkin since she was 4 days old! If you want to hear more from me though, you can find me visiting Michaela's blog, taking part in her "She Loves Me, She Loves Not" series! Make sure to drop by! 


Today, Amelia from House Pretty is here to introduce you to her lovely little blog. Amelia is a fellow Canadian, living out on the East Coast and I know you'll enjoy her posts as much as I do...


I’m Amelia from House Pretty and I’m so excited to be guest posting for Kerry while she helps out with her brother’s wedding. I started my blog last March after my husband and I bought our first house – a 42 year-old fixer-upper (“fixer-upper” being a bit of an understatement). I love a good DIY challenge and my husband helped out with a years-long renovation of his parents’ house (which was also the venue for our August wedding), and a blog seemed like a fun way to document and share our progress (and to meet other people doing the same thing). Let me show you around.

This is exterior now that we’ve pressure-washed the siding, painted just about everything (windows, shutters, foundation, garage door), re-graveled the driveway and took on some major landscaping.

When you step inside, one of the first rooms you see (if you ignore the so-ugly-we-can’t-wait-to-rip-it-out-and-start-over kitchen) is the living room/dining room. With a little white paint (OK, a lot) I turned a GIANT red chimney from an eyesore into a focal point, while my husband painted the ceiling, trim and walls. We replaced the light fixture in the dining room and we’re on the hunt for an inoffensive ceiling fan for the living room (easier said than done?). Eventually we’ll upgrade the laminate flooring to hardwood and add more substantial baseboards (and while we’re on the subject of things I want, a new couch would be good too).

Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a bathroom. We’ve got plans to replace the carpet with hardwood and new, wider baseboards, and we have four newly-purchased solid pine doors in the garage waiting to be hung (the current interior doors have seen better days, probably during the 1970s). The rooms may be on the smaller side, but I love their nine foot ceilings.

The bathroom was one of our first projects and the room we’re closest to “finishing”. The old homeowner had installed a new tub/shower and toilet, so we painted the old oak vanity, replaced the hardware and purchased and installed a new vanity top and water-saving faucet. We also bought a new mirror, painted the shelving and replaced the light fixture over the vanity. Believe it or not, we’re not done yet - I still want to paint the ceiling grey and add crown moulding.

I’ve only tackled one of the bedrooms so far. It would make sense if it was our bedroom, but we needed a semi-decent room for a few guests before and after our wedding (which only kind of worked out, I’m pretty sure the room was missing a door when our guests arrived). I love this room because it’s filled with DIY projects (dresser, lamp, chair, drapes, headboard) and it feels clean and bright.

I still need to add accessories and art, and eventually we’d like to upgrade our guests from a futon to a real mattress, but it’s better than the master bedroom, which looks like this:

Sanding textured walls is NOT fun, but staying in the guest room while I work on our neutral-themed bedroom kind of is (can you tell I haven’t been on vacation in awhile?). I’ve got lots of DIY projects planned for this room, but I have to finish those walls first.

I hope you enjoyed my house tour and thanks again for letting me stop by! 

Thank you Amelia for dropping in for a visit! Looking forward to seeing all of your master bedroom progress! Well, I have one more guest post coming up tomorrow... another fantastic Canadian blogger who I am sure you will enjoy just as much as these first three ladies, so make sure to come back!