I don’t think we talk about this often enough: Curb Appeal
It may be easy to turn a blind eye to the outside, but remember it is your home’s first impression.
The perfect time to consider exterior changes is when you’re getting a new roof. You’ll likely need to repaint some areas so it is a good time to change colors on both your house and the roof.
We like to take a picture of your exterior and do some renderings to show you different options; Light fixtures, different colors, trim changes and perhaps even architectural changes all can make a dramatic improvement.
We recently had a client buy a home because it checked all the boxes—except for the outside. For this particular project we took out two porthole windows on the front of the home. We had plenty of windows for light and the design was distracting to the rest of the home, so out they went. Removing those prompted the painting of the brick because we had to patch those in (and the brick color was less than desirable) which totally changed the look of the home.
We also took off the rounded copper front porch because it didn’t shelter anything. We built a new porch that came out and gave shelter, and changed the front doors. Removing mullions and reworking a window also modernized the home.
These were big changes—huge, in fact! If you have the money to spend, architectural changes such as these can make a meaningful change to not only your home’s curb appeal but also its value.
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Start with your front porch and work your way out. First, clean it. There’s nothing worse than walking up to a home with a dirty front porch. Sweep it off, clean your windows and put out a welcome mat and some planters with flowers. Maybe consider updating your address numbers. These are all simple changes that can have a big result.
In one of our projects the owner didn’t want to replace the concrete on the front porch, so we added a four-foot by six-foot outdoor area rug and layered a welcome mat on top of that. It gave a fresh, inviting look and you can’t even see the damaged concrete now.
Landscaping is another relatively simple change. One thing I run into with people who have lived in a house a long time (myself included) is that things you may have planted 20 years ago may not look the best now. I can barely trim my boxwoods they are so overgrown they hardly have any green on them.
If it’s so large it’s hiding or damaging your home—it’s time to go. Pull out the old and put in something fresh and simple. Landscaping provides the biggest bang for your buck.
That’s a wrap on our July home improvement series! If you happened to miss any, you can catch up on the other two posts here: