restoring the roost

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style

North Carolina Country Living and Farmhouse Style
since 2010

Paint Colors

· decorating the roost, new house

It’s easy to get overwhelmed when building a house–we have had plenty of stressful moments when making decisions and modifying plans in order to stay within our budget. Choosing paint colors is no exception to creating confusion and uncertainty.

And who knew there were so many different shades of white to choose from?!?

Since it’s hard to get a feel for a color like white, grey, or another light shade from a small paint card sample, I’ve been relying on seeing the paint used in whole rooms from pictures online or in magazines.

Since we are building a farmhouse, I feel that white is an appropriate color to start with for a clean, fresh slate for all of the rooms. Plus, I love the brightness and lightness that it will give to the house. I may gradually paint some of the rooms a different, darker color (perhaps the dining room and bedrooms), but to start I’d like to live in the house with white for a while to help me decide if and what color to paint before I make the plunge into color!

I am so nervous about committing myself to color and tend to go with a pretty neutral palette anyway….

The other night my husband and I got a rare “date” night to go out to dinner together by ourselves–want to guess what else we did? Went to the Sherwin Williams paint store, of course! I grabbed a bunch of paint chip samples that I knew were close to shades I would like to use in the new house.

At home I grouped them further into what I’d be using them for (see above image)–the whites for most of the interior walls, the greys for the kitchen cabinets, the mint greenish bluish colors for our master bath, and the others were just colors I liked in general. These are just the colors from Sherwin Williams–we have yet to look at other stores (and I’m not sure I want to!) so needless to say it will be a difficult decision.

Below are some inspirational photos from Pinterest with pretty neutral color palettes and various shades of white or light grey. I’m starting to lean towards a light creamy grey color perhaps for the kitchen cabinets, but I’m just not sure yet…..

Via Workbook by Westbrook
Via Jennifer Rizzo on Bloglovin

Via Décor Pad
Via DeVol Kitchens

I’ve always loved a “mint” type green close to a robin’s egg blue or jadeite type green in small doses–so I may use a color like that somehow in our bathroom or maybe as an accent color to some of the other rooms too. I’m also partial to deep chocolate browns–I feel like brown is a nice neutral for a lesser-used room.

And I couldn’t help myself picking out some light pinks because I know the girls will love them 🙂

Sunny Slope Farm

· Homesteading, new house

Our friends who generously gifted us the land for our new house have been asking us what we are going to name our homestead.  I hadn’t thought much about it really….who knew how difficult it could be to think of something unique and personal to the land.

Not too long ago they mentioned they had found some really cool old documents and papers stuffed behind the wall where their fireplace is (they live in the original old farmhouse of the larger farm), and a few of them happened to be correspondence from the old farm which was named “Sunny Slope Farm.”

That being its historic name, I couldn’t think of a better more fitting name for the homestead 🙂

House Build Progress

· new house

We have a foundation!! Woohoo!

 Last week and this week our builders have been busily erecting the foundation of our new house. It is so exciting to see it take shape! First the footings were dug and concrete poured, then the block has gone up and finally the brick. By the time of this posting the entire foundation has probably been completed.

We are so happy with how the brick we chose turned out. The brick is from Triangle Brick (the company our builder works with and recommended) and the color we chose was “Oakton” with a standard mortar.

Here is a close-up of the “Oakton”–the mortar will lighten a little bit more over time as it dries.

More in-progress work by the brick masons who are beginning to start on the north elevation:

Our well got put in and is complete and our electric has been installed too!

And here is the start of our fruit tree orchard we planted a few weeks ago:

Another view from higher up of the house progress:

Hope everyone has a blessed weekend,
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Planting Fruit Trees at the Homestead

· gardening, Homesteading, new house

Several weeks ago we picked up some fruit trees from a local nursery and produce shop. We bought 4 apples, two pears and a plum. We plan to get a few more apples and plums, some nectarines, and a cherry or two.

Ideally we would have planted these earlier in the winter, but since the livestock fence on our property was just recently constructed we wanted to wait until it was complete to plant the fruit trees and keep them safe from trampling.

Now the fence is up and we are ready to begin planting our home orchard!  Previously on this blog I discussed choosing which fruit trees we wanted to plant in our home orchard, and you can read about that here.  We are trying to purchase our fruit from local sources as much as possible. I feel like they will be better suited and adapted to our climate that way…..and I really just like supporting local businesses 🙂

Here is a homestead site plant that I sketched out last year showing where the orchard will be:

Last weekend while my husband’s family was here we planted the first of the trees into the ground, in a spot that receives full sun and is slightly sloping to the south.

We planted the trees in two rows spaced 20 feet apart and followed the recommendations for planting for our area according to our local university’s home orchard planting advice.

To summarize, we dug a hole twice the size of the root ball or root stock, in order that the grafting intersection at the bottom of the tree would sit up about 2 inches above the soil line. Then we put a little bit of bone meal into the soil along with rocks for drainage and we surrounded the root of the tree with topsoil once it was placed in the hole. We covered the top of the root with topsoil and made sure it was well-watered.

Next we will make sure to water them regularly and then we will stake the trees, prune, and cover the base of the trees with mulch.
The house is progressing quickly! We have the foundation footings dug and poured (shown in the picture below) and now the foundation is really starting to take shape.
The masons have even faced one entire side of the foundation with our brick we picked out. Can’t wait to share some updated photos with you soon!

Breaking Ground!

· Homesteading, new house

It’s really happening, folks.

The start of our driveway!

We drove out the other night to the property to check on the progress of the driveway construction and lo and behold–to our surprise–they had broken ground on our house!!!

Looking at the footprint of our new house!

Looking towards the western end of the property and the start of a livestock fence

We closed on the construction loan on January 20th and since then have been anticipating when construction would start. Now that it has begun things may happen pretty quickly–we are so excited!

View looking back down the driveway towards the road–this is one of the views you will see from the front porch 🙂

BJ and the girls “inside” the footprint of our house

The start of a livestock fence to secure the back yard from the horses and cows. This view faces the South, where our garden will sit on the other side of the house.

I’m so looking forward to sharing our progress with you on the making of our 11 acre homestead. Stay tuned for updates!

Our first family “selfie” at our build site!