Curb appeal improvements: Final reveal!

I've been busy this summer working on a bunch of exterior projects, repairing things and trying to improve our home's curb appeal. I'm not through yet; the landscaping needs help, but I feel like I've made great strides.

Since everyone loves a before and after, I thought it'd be fun to collect all the projects in one place with a bunch of side-by-sides.

I started small by repainting our basement windows to make them match the rest of the windows on the house.

Then after many months of procrastination, I finally refinished our chipped and flaky front door.

And stripped and repainted the cracked and peeling door frame.

With the help of my dad, we replaced our crumbling porch steps with a set of pre-fab stairs.

And resurfaced the chipping concrete porch surface.

After the repairs were complete, I painted the porch to unify the old and new concrete.

And refurbished and painted the railing.

And last, but not least, I repainted the mailbox (and added a bit of detail).

So that's it for the short term projects. I hope I don't have to do any of this again for a long long time!

We have plans to replace the sad and broken walkways this fall too. I'm kind of nervous about that. I haven't found any pavers I've loved yet, but I've yet to make a trip to a real landscape materials place.

Yeah, the landscaping really needs some attention. I'm thinking those giant Rose of Sharons to the right are considering swallowing up the house and might have to go. What do you think?

Refurbishing our metal porch railing (p.s. it looks like new!)

The final project in my porch makeover was giving the railing some love and attention. It's been missing for several months while we worked on the surface of the porch, but now that all of that's complete, it was time it went back up.

Before

From the street, the railing looked white. But up close, you could tell it was a dull unfinished aluminum. Aluminum doesn't rust, so it was still in pretty good condition. A little rickety, but because the shape is traditional and classic, I knew that with some refurbishing, we could avoid a wholesale replacement. Save some bucks!

Before

First, those curly things had to go. A small part of me likes them, but I have to admit they were making the porch (and the house) look pretty dated. They were attached with some rusty screws, so my dad had to cut them off. But he was able to do it without harming the curls themselves. And (of course), I saved them, so they might show up in a later project.

My dad also worked on a number of fairly undetectable changes. Our old stairs were three feet wide and the new steps are four feet wide. We wanted to match the wider step with a wider opening, so he shortened the large stretch of railing in the front.

Along those lines, my plan all along was only to replace one of the handrails on the steps. Two handrails seemed a bit unnecessary and they made the entry feel very tight. Replacing just the rail on the right gives it a much more open and gracious feel. And it's easier to walk through when you're carrying things like groceries or a small person.

Those with an eye for detail will notice that the handrail is new. The company that manufactures the pre-fab step units also sells handrails that screw right into pre-drilled holes in the steps. The old handrails were not exactly sturdy, so it made sense to just replace them with something that was designed to work with the steps. The shape of the handrail isn't the same as the existing porch rail, but it's close enough that it blends pretty well.

My dad also replaced all of the bolts and screws holding the entire railing together (they were rusted and some were missing) before returning the railing to me for painting.

I used 4+ cans of premium spray paint in the same glossy black that I did for the mailbox. At $6.48 each, the total was not cheap, but definitely cheaper than a new railing. This stuff has a built-in primer and also can be sprayed upside down and at weird angles so that helps when you're painting something with a lot of crevices like this.

I painted the railing in sections in my garage (not on the finished porch). I put down newspaper and some large pieces of cardboard, but those are the only areas of the floor that don't have paint on them now. The spray really travels! (It's kind of a junky floor, so it doesn't really matter.)

It looks a thousand times better than it did before and contrasts really well with the porch. Stay tuned for a full porch reveal later this week!

Update: See all of our recent curb appeal projects!

Painting my concrete porch: The penultimate porch project

After our crumbling concrete porch was repaired, we had a fully functional porch, but the surface looked unfinished and under construction.

Stripping and repainting our front door frame

The frame around our front door needed re-painting. The old paint was peeling and there were a handful of useless nails hammered into it and painted over. I guess they were probably used by a previous owner to hang Christmas lights. The whole thing was ugly.

Glossy black mailbox makeover

We get a lot of magazines and packages, and the small mailbox that came with the house wasn't going to cut it. As I've shared before, we don't really have much of an overhang on our porch to keep things out of the rain, so a big mailbox is a necessity. So we hung a new mailbox as soon as we moved in three years ago, and I painted it red. It can fit multiple magazines and those big priority mail envelopes. It's pretty great.

Before

But I'm tiring of the red as an accent color, as I mentioned in my exterior update. I was ready for a change. But rather than replace the mailbox altogether, I decided (as per usual) that it would be way cheaper to just update it. Mailboxes are expensive! Seriously, I'll wait while you go investigate the prices of wall-mounted mailboxes. You'll find just the basic ones start around $40-50. I think I snagged this one for about $25 off of ebay because it has a slight, barely noticeable bend in the lid. Can't see it? Well, like I said, it is barely noticeable.

I also wanted to give it some personality and after much fruitless internet searching, I finally found this small piece of ironwork at Hobby Lobby. The size was pretty perfect for the size of my mailbox and it was on sale for only $2.50 (regular price $4.99 with 50% off). In case you're in search of something similar, this kind of thing is in the "Wall Decor" section of HL.

First, I spray painted the mailbox black. I didn't want any of the red peeking out from underneath the applique. Once that was good and dry, it was time to attach it to the mailbox. I was originally going to use screws, given that there are screw holes in the ironwork, but really, why drill through metal when glue works just as well?

I half measured, half eyeballed where to put the applique and marked the placement with a pencil. Then I used a healthy dose of E-6000 epoxy glue to secure it to the surface and let it dry flat overnight.

I followed up with another coat of glossy black spray paint for a unified look and ended up using nearly the whole can of spray paint. I may have a bit of a lead finger, though. I don't really know when to stop.

Overall, it looks so much more sophisticated, especially for less than $10. And the black definitely de-emphasizes the mailbox. We've never had our mail stolen, but why give passers-by any ideas, right?

Crumbling concrete porch -- repaired!

My dad recently finished resurfacing our crumbling concrete porch! There's still work to do, but the worst of the project is finally behind us.

Before

Our porch was cracked and crumbling. Luckily the damage was concentrated in one area: along the edge and near the steps.

As I noted in my previous post about replacing the porch steps, my dad did all of the work, so I don't have a super amount of detail about the process of working with concrete, but I will do my best to describe what you see here.

After temporarily removing the railing, my dad chipped all of the loose concrete off the surface and off the front face of the porch.

He removed the aged vinyl patch that ran the length of this crack. After cleaning it up, he sealed it with a self-leveling concrete caulk. This particular crack was responsible for a small leak in our basement every time it rained and I am pleased to say that I haven't seen any water since it was repaired, despite some heavy storms.

Then it was time to fix the main surface. He shimmied out the steps a bit and built a simple form out of wood around the front, corner and side of the porch surface.

This corner shows how much of the surface was actually missing.

Then it was time to pour the concrete. I'm not sure exactly what type of concrete he used, but I know he mixed it with a special bonding product because concrete doesn't stick to concrete without some sort of help.

He removed the form a couple of days later after the concrete was hard and dry.

The front surface had to be troweled on separately after the rest of the concrete because it was underneath the form. It's not perfect, but I'm happy with the results. And it's no longer a tripping hazard!

The new concrete and old concrete are different in color and texture, so I'm hoping some paint will help unify the repair and make it less noticeable.

I'm thinking of a color in the gray-green family. The middle shade (Valspar's Mossy Aura) is my current choice, though I was considering the dark one for a while. I have to wait 60 days for the concrete to cure before I can paint. Here's to hoping the temperature lets up sometime in late August or I'll have to wait until fall.

---------------------------------------

Previous posts in the porch process

Replacing our crumbling concrete porch steps

Porch progress?

My crumbling concrete porch

A letter to the future

As part of our porch step restoration, I thought it would be cool to hide a time capsule inside. I actually wanted to do this during our bathroom renovation, but didn't get it together before we closed up the walls. In execution, what I did doesn't really fit the definition of "time capsule"; it's more like a letter to the future.

I included a photo of us and a photo of our house as it was before the steps were ripped off. It's just an inkjet printout on cardstock, so I hope it survives.

I packaged the letter in a ziploc bag, then a plastic container (from baby puffs) and then inside a larger ziploc bag. I don't expect the cavity under the steps will be hit hard by the elements, so maybe it's chances are good. It might not be the prettiest time capsule in the world, but it's functional.

I'm not including the text of the letter here. It was pretty simple. I introduced us and talked a little about the house. But in hindsight, I got a little sappy toward the end and it'd be kind of embarrassing to share. Hopefully I will be long gone by the time anyone else reads it! Isn't that what it's all about anyway?

Replacing our crumbling concrete porch steps

As I've mentioned before, our concrete porch needs a lot of repairs. The surface is chipped and cracking. The stairs were too far gone to repair and had to be completely replaced.

Before

My dad did all of this work, so I don't have the details or know-how about pouring concrete, etc. But I will do my best to describe what you see.

A few weeks ago, he chipped the old stairs out completely. With a clean slate, we were ready to pour a concrete pad for the stairs to sit on. This is an aerial view of the concrete form. Those circles are lengths of pipe he used as forms the footings.

The pre-made concrete replacement steps are hollow, and the base of them is U-shaped, so the pad was U-shaped to match. Pouring the whole rectangle would have required a whole lot of concrete and most of it would have been hidden and unnecessary.

The set of stairs was only $110 pre-tax from a local manufacturer. Buying them pre-made was definitely easier and probably cheaper than pouring a set ourselves.

And here they are in place on the pad... all 400 pounds of them! Yeah, there's quite a difference in color between the new steps and the old porch. I'm choosing to worry about that later when the repairs are complete.

We still have a lot of this chipped and cracking garbage to fix on the surface of the porch. More to come!

Porch progress?

Remember my crumbling concrete porch? Well, we're making progress. I think. Originally the plan was just to chip away the loose and cracking concrete on the steps and then resurface them. But on second look, they were in really bad condition underneath and weren't worth saving. By the time we chipped out most of the loose stuff, there wouldn't have been anything left to resurface.

Before

My dad tore out the boxwoods. Sorry, it had to be done to make room to do the repairs. They were too big for the space anyway. Then he chipped the steps out with a sledge hammer, which took a couple of hours.

We plan to replace them with a pre-fabricated set of concrete stairs once we pour a new concrete pad, but for now, we have some temporary steps built from scrap wood. (Actually, it's our old fence!) I also just became aware that we needed a building permit to do all of this (oops!), so I drew up my proposal and applied for that yesterday. I hope that gets approved soon so we can move forward, but really, the only thing that's stopping us now is scheduling and the weather.