What Your Front Door Says About You

Have you ever wanted what your front door says about you?  I will admit that the outside of my house doesn’t get as much attention from me as the inside.  You can bet that I will not have a lot of posts on gardening or lawn care.  Believe me I have tried.  Getting grass to grow was my personal challenge in 2008, 2009 and 2010.  In 2011 we hired someone and it looks much better.  I also have a hard time keeping shrubs alive but can’t kill bamboo or ivy – go figure.  But I do want our home to look good.   It is very frustrating!

Recently I have done some minor updates to improve the look of our front door and stoop.  I saw a study that an improved front door increased the perceived value of the home by $9,000.  Crazy huh?  But it makes sense since the front door is almost like the handshake of your home.  First impressions count!

Here is our house:

We have a screen door that is a deep burgundy color.  If I were to pick out new a storm door, I would get something wooden with an architectural feature.  But our current door is in perfect working order and isn’t all that old.  So I needed to work with what we had rather than buying new.  Our front door was black which tied in to the black shutters.  I decided to paint the door to match the storm door to give it a more unified look.  I repositioned the mailbox and house numbers. 

I also planed these shrubs in the planters.  I don’t think you can go wrong with symmetry on a stoop.

 My goal is to keep these guys through March or April.  I am hosting a shower for my cousin on February 11th.  If they can stay alive through then I will be happy.  Then once spring comes, I want to plant them along the side of the house to fill in this random area where we created a storage room where there was an open area under our house. 

I think originally this was supposed to be a screen porch maybe, I am not sure.  But since we have a deck off of the back, we never really used that area. 

Currently these are only $10 from Home Depot and they will grow up to 6 feet tall.  Pretty good deal for a tree if you can keep it alive!  It needs a lot of sun so it would not work in our back yard.

 There is a lot we can do with the outside of our house…paint it all one color?  We have been debating that one for awhile now.  Hopefully there will be even more “afters” for our house and yard!  We will just need to bring in some reinforcements to do it.  Rudy and I are lucky to have wonderful neighbors and friends who are talented in this arena!