Help!

Help! We are giving a party next weekend and the front of our house just doesn’t say, “Welcome”. Thanks, Mary



Mary,
You should always feel good about pulling up to your home. Curb Appeal matters whether you are selling, buying, throwing a party, or just pulling in the drive after a long day. It is the first and often the only thing anyone sees. Statistics show buyers will not even look inside if they do not like the first impression.

Last spring I consulted with this young couple on the vegetable garden in their backyard and was happy to do a quick fix on the front.










You see these ranches from the 50’s all over the city so I thought you might like to have some simple hints for giving your home more curb appeal.

— We addressed the flowerbeds and shrubs with some deadheading of the perennials, trimming and weeding.
— Rather than mulch (they had done that in late spring) we simply used a tool called a ‘weasel’ that tills the mulch restoring the volume and making the mulch look like new. This is a real cost/time saver.
— The client painted the front door to match her living room walls. A black door can often feel like a big black hole and not very welcoming. A simple decoration on the door—in this case vertical to break up the horizontal lines of the ranch—gives an updated look.
— We also painted rather than replace the house numbers.
— Installed a new, slightly larger light fixture.
— The biggest change was to paint out the brick on the lower half of the front. Using one color really helps the house look larger. Because the house had been painted within the last few years, we didn’t have to paint anything but the bricks and were able to save by using existing paint.
— Again, to break up the horizontal lines, we planted vertical evergreens to accent the porch and beds.
— We added a few stepping stones through the large mulched area for both the postman and the children to use as a path to the neighbor.
— We cut the grass and trimmed the sidewalk and driveway edges.
— We finished in two days and we were even invited to the party!







Curb appeal takes some work, but it doesn’t have to be expensive. Contact us at agardenershome@gmail.com for help on making your home one people want to visit. We consult and/or do the labor.