A Tale of Two Doors

The first project was a restoration of the front porch storm door.  There were cracked panes of glass, the bottom was coming apart, the house numbers were mismatched and the paint was cracked and peeling. Additionally, the front porch light has had no cover (for almost 4 years) and the doorbell was just a hole in the exterior trim that carpenter bees were increasingly drawn to explore.  What a fabulous welcome to our house, right?

Our house, summer 2010Here’s the house before the storm door work, new light fixture, door bell, pressure washing from https://www.pressurewashingsugarland.com and planted containers.  It doesn’t look too bad, but that’s because its not a close up shot and the lawn has been done.  I truly believe a well manicured yard hides a multitude of flaws.

A Tale of Two Doors The project occurred over two weekends and involved fixing all the wrongs to the storm door, buying a replacement light cover (we look much less ghetto now) and re-wiring the doorbell that Tim accidentally broke during our first few months in the house.

the finished front porch Additionally,we added a great plastic applique from Piccadilly Peddlers on Etsy for the house numbers so folks would actually be able to read our address from the road. Our home is a Cape Cod, and symmetry is one of the hallmark features of this style. To enhance that, I planted several containers with white oleander topiaries under planted with ‘Lemonade’ Lantana and ‘Marghertia’ sweet potato vine. Being from Florida, I was so excited to see the Oleander topiary and Lantana at my local garden center, I saw a chance to use Florida flora give the front porch a traditional look. A second container on each side of the door contains large ferns from Home Depot. After a thorough cleaning with a pressure washer, the front porch was ready to be assembled. After looking at the front porch I’m thinking I might need some nice black accents to really make the entry pop. So I’m on the lookout for black containers to tie in the black shutters on the front of the house. What do you think? What else could we do? Paint the front door and trim black? Or go for the new one from The Screenmobile?