restoring the roost

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style
since 2010

DIY tutorials

Getting Ready for Baby…

· DIY tutorials, family, new house

I can’t believe we only have a few or so weeks until our baby arrives! It really has gone by so fast this time around–having twin 5 year olds sure does keep one busy and occupied.

I’ve felt great so far and really enjoyed this pregnancy. It’s been smooth and so much easier than my twin pregnancy–I’m praying it stays that way! We took some impromptu maternity photos recently when it snowed here in NC. My husband and I may have been a little crazy running out in the middle of the snowstorm but I think we got some pretty shots to document this precious little one growing inside 🙂

Still, we have managed to find time to prepare for this new little one in the most basic ways. I thought I would share with you all the ways we have prepared (early on) for the new baby in our house. I hope this may help some readers out there who are wondering what and when to do the things for preparation of a new little one when you already have young children and most of what you need.

Since we are keeping the baby in our master bathroom (attached to our bedroom) likely for the first six months to one year, we didn’t have to worry about a “proper” nursery. We simply set up the crib, changing table, diaper pail and hamper in the area where a bathtub would normally go (but we had left empty).

My mom got me this wonderful changing table on sale from Pottery Barn that can double as shelving for when the baby gets a little older.  I outfitted it with some baskets from HomeGoods to hold things like diaper changing necessities, clothes, blankets and extra crib sheets, wipes, and many other things.

The crib fits perfectly in this little nook beside our shower. On the wall I hung some baskets that we used in the girls’ nursery to hold diapers so they are within easy reach. The hamper is also new from HomeGoods.

Upstairs in our guest bedroom (we aren’t sure where the baby’s room will end up being yet), we have added the baby armoire and stocked it with most of what we already had on hand in terms of blankets, crib sheets, clothes, bibs, socks, and any other baby necessity that would normally fit in a dresser.

I started early in the second trimester pulling everything out of the attic, sorting through it, washing anything that could be washed and putting it away. I organized and cleaned anything we had saved that we could reuse for this baby, including things like breast pump containers, bottles and feeding supplies, baby seats and carriers, and baby toys and books.

Each week I did a little bit more until most of the work was completed. I don’t like to procrastinate, and I decided it would be better to go ahead and get as much as I possibly could done when I was still feeling up to it rather than wait until late in the third trimester when I may not be feeling so great.

Next I began making a list of things that we would need new and I created a small Amazon baby registry. Some things we added we did not have for the girls and we decided would be nice to have for this baby, and other things we needed new of that we had either lost or needed to replace.

In our living room, I cleared out a bookshelf to house baby books and used one of our cabinets to hold baby toys since the baby will probably be playing downstairs quite a bit the first year. In our bedroom, we moved the glider from upstairs to a corner in our bedroom and replaced where it was in the girls’ room with another armchair.

Some friends of ours and my sister-in-law hosted a lovely baby Sprinkle for us which was so nice! We received a lot of needed items and some new fun things for this baby girl–she is already so loved 🙂

We are excited to meet our baby girl soon and our daughters are looking forward to being big sisters! I’m being monitored for any signs of preeclampsia considering I had it with my twins last pregnancy, but so far everything looks great (for which I’m so thankful!). Praying things will go smoothly during labor and delivery and that we will have a healthy baby and mama 🙂

DIY Moss Wreath

· decorating the roost, DIY tutorials

This wreath is super easy to make–I mean really simple.

I just took a regular old plain grapevine wreath, gathered some fresh moss from my yard and stuck it into the wreath all along the front. Since we only have a handful of spring flowers in our yard but we do have an overabundance of moss, I thought this might be a good way to use what we had for a pretty front door decoration.

Moss keeps for a long while after pulling it from the ground and I didn’t want to mess the grapevine wreath up by gluing anything to it, so instead I just chose to tuck moss into the vines. Hang your completed wreath with a ribbon and you are done! Easy peasy. Best of all, I love the natural look.

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful spring. It sure is very green here and wet as we’ve had lots of rain lately.  Here is the view of a portion of our yard from the front porch:

Our garden is really coming along nicely and I can’t wait to update you in a future post!

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The Scoop

Vintage Children’s Armoire Makeover

· decorating the roost, DIY tutorials

A 1950s children’s armiore comes back full circle for use in our twins’ nursery!

I found the manufacturer’s sticker on the inside, indicating it was the “Storkline” brand of furniture, which made all sorts of children’s furniture from the 1930s through the 1960s. I believe the wooden pulls are original to the piece, as they seem to fit that era and we have no record of my Grandma ever changing the hardware on it. It was originally owned by my Grandma for my mom’s nursery when she was a baby, and subsequently used by other mothers in our family, including by my mom for me in my baby nursery (which was, by the way, done in Peach and “Williamsburg” blue colors with a stenciled teddy bear theme- classic 1984!)

The last person to use it was my cousin for her children, and she is giving it back to me to keep the tradition going 🙂  It has been painted many times, and its last treatment was a coat of solid plain white flat paint with no finish on it. Since the walls of the nursery are an off-white and we have white cribs in the room, I wanted a piece with a little more contrast.

the armoire- “before”

Soooo, I’m trying out a new color in our house- the beautiful Annie Sloane “Duck Egg Blue” from her Chalk Paint line. I chose this because its non-toxic and without strong fumes like a lot of traditional paints and I just loved the lovely, calming look of the color. It’s very versatile and is easy to make lighter or darker with added tinting or coats of wax and other treatments overtop of the paint. It also works well in our gender neutral nursery since we are not finding out the sexes of our babies until birth.

We took these steps we took in giving this piece a new look:


1. Removed knobs and any other exterior hardware from piece

2. Sanded down the piece (I used a handheld electric sander) and wiped with damp cloth

3. Applied a coat or two of the chalk paint (it dries very fast in between coats!) and let dry

4. Applied coating of clear furniture wax, let sit for an hour, polished piece

5. Heavily sanded wooden pulls for a distressed look, cleaned, and returned to finished piece

Here is what the armoire looks like now in our nursery:

my little vignette on top of the dresser: a lamp, some vintage books, antique blocks, my newborn hospital photo and my baby shoes that my mom had bronzed

I added a bulletin board above the armoire covered in fabric and showing off family photos

The armoire actually holds quite a bit, and will be a great storage piece for many years to come. Besides “hang up clothes” for the twins, we are using it to hold items such as crib sheets, blankets, burp cloths, pacifiers, socks and mitts, baby safety and hygiene items, bibs and baby spoons, baby slings/carriers, and hooded towels.

I am pleased with this furniture makeover and love how easy the chalk paint is to work with. I guess you just got another little sneak peek of the twins’ nursery, but no more until the final reveal 🙂  Now on to the next nursery project!

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DIY Wood Pallet Potting Bench

· decorating the roost, DIY tutorials, gardening

Did you know you can make an adorable, functional potting bench from leftover (and usually free) wood pallets? Yes, you can!

My husband found this idea and ran with it– his work has several leftover and free wood pallets each week, so he grabbed about 3-4 and brought them home. The only portions he had to purchase new were a couple of wood 2 x 4’s, which we aged with a solution of vinegar, steel wool, and coffee grounds to match the rest of the wood.

The potting bench in progress:

The finished potting bench:

We will use this piece for much more than potting and caring for plants and seedlings. Since its home is on our screened-in-porch, it will be used to store coolers on the bottom shelf, act as a bar/buffet for parties and gatherings, and  will be a great place to attempt messy projects that we’d rather not try indoors. Most of all, it will be a great one-stop center for all of my gardening and planting gear that I don’t want to keep in the shed!

If you are handy with a saw and building stuff like my hubby, click here for some instructions.

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National Register of Historic Places Workshop: Part 2

· architectural history, DIY tutorials

Welcome to the second part of the National Register nomination workshop! Be sure to check out Part 1 in this series of posts in case you missed it- it is very important! Today we will focus on the background research and documentation that is necessary to complete the nomination form.

In order to compose a proper history and description for your historic property’s nomination, you must first do your research. This will involve physically investigating and documenting the site as well as research at your local library, archives, historical society and/or court house on the history of your property. Key topics you will want to be thinking about besides the architectural features and physical description of the property are:

– geographical features
-owner history
-architect or builder
-changes to the property over time
-construction methods
-form and style of the property
-historic contexts
-association with important events or people
-how unique or rare your property type and its features are to your region

For advice on how to to better discover your home’s history (the methods of which can be applied to any property), visit this post.

Developing appropriate historic contexts is a very important part of the nomination. Whether that context be architecture, agriculture, politics, military, or an aspect of social history, it is critical that you provide enough historical background information to illustrate how your historic property contributes to a greater historic context. For more information on preparing the essays for various contexts, refer to National Register Bulletins 15 and 39.

Documenting your property with sketches and photography is equally as important as recording its architectural features in writing. You will want to take a liberal amount of digital photos, especially since you can always delete the unnecessary ones later. Take overall shots of the house from each angle, of each elevation, and be sure to capture architectural details as well as larger context shots.

It is a good idea to also sketch a floor plan of the property if you do not already have one available to you. If you are documenting a farm complex or group of properties that go together, sketch out a map of the entire complex property showing the relationship of the various buildings to each other and to other nearby geographical features.

I hope this has helped shed some light on the National Register nomination process. Stay tuned for future workshops that will focus on making a case for your property’s significance and completing the nomination form itself. Have fun researching!