Front Porch Makeover (Phase One) + Fall Front Door Decor
Our front porch is surprisingly one of the first spots in the house that feels somewhat “done”, even though we have a huge phase two to come in the spring.
If you didn’t know by the name, our house had a 30 foot ramp running out of the front door and leading all the way to the street. Not only was that something we had to demo, but the wheelchair use by the previous owner had damaged a lot of the doors and trim in the house. In a perfect world we would have been able to replace the front door completely, but some filler, paint, and a change of hardware will have to do for now!
The real, honest reason I was so motivated to makeover this area is for nothing else than the holiday decor potential! I’m shamelessly a big fan of holiday decorating and wanted to be able to make this work-in-progress house feel like a home as soon as possible. Scroll down for the final fall front porch reveal from this first phase of our exterior reno.
- THE BEFORE + DURING PHOTOS-
I didn’t really think to take proper “before” photos of the front porch, but this is the most accurate one showing the state of the front porch before we touched it!
You can see the hot mess that is the ramp leading right to the front door and the rotten porch post (phase two’s major project).
Also the ashtray and smoke damage on the porch ceiling.
You’ll also notice how there are TWO sets of numbers (both ugly)…
Plus a weird unidentified stain…
Scrapes/damage on the door…
A green door…
Filthy white mailbox & light fixture (said bye to those real fast)…
and a death drop off the side of the porch!
So in such a small area there was a fair bit to clean up. Most of the big stuff will be done in phase two, but this is what our progress looked like to get to a decent place in time for thanksgiving:
STEP 1: FILL GOUGES
+ PAINT THE DOOR!
After having a “lesson learned” moment ordering a can of paint from Sherwin Williams in Domino and learning that NOT ALL BLACK IS ACTUALLY BLACK, I just went to Home Depot and grabbed a cheaper exterior true black paint.
I also had an extra can of black metal spray paint lying around and decided to give the mailbox a spray. It would’ve been much easier to replace but we tried to save some money when possible.
STEP TWO: REMOVED THE GIANT RAMP
A really, really gross job that we left until the end of summer.
We gave the pavers, steps and landing a spray with our hose as we don’t have a pressure washer yet and they were in serious need of washing.
And after replacing the light fixture and removing one of the sets of numbers (and decorating for autumn, of course), we arrived at this phase one reveal!
