Whether you’re trying to boost your houses’ market value or you are a connoisseur of the arts, improving your real estate’s all-around appeal is something that springtime is ideal for. Whether it is the front façade, the driveway, the backyard or the patio (you really ought to have one), there are numerous improvements that you can carry out without overspending. The improvement ideas we list here are mainly DIY projects but there are a couple of outdoor features that you will have to hire professionals to help you. All in all, the overall appeal of your house can be improved, so be ready to roll up your sleeves this spring!
Use Greenery as Decoration
We believe that you take good care of the lawn in front of and behind the house but a green lawn will not suffice if you want people to be mesmerized with the look of your house. What you need is more greenery tactfully planted in all places. First of all, you can plant decorative shrubs along the front porch so you would conceal the guardrail and the fence in general. Like with the door, the shrubbery can be multicoloured and you can use mulch in different colours for the ground as well. The windows and the walls of the front porch can be accentuated with climbers and wines that will double as shade during the summer months. If you are feeling audacious, then you can create or order a flower archway that will be placed over the front gate.
Repainting the Front Door
A new splash of paint on the front façade will cost money and time since you cannot paint the house on your own. However, there is one small surface that you can paint by yourself and that is the front door. Presuming that the colour of the walls of your house is a dark or neutral one, such as grey, brown or white, the front door could be used to usher in a brighter colour. Orange, blue, and red are all bold hues that you can decide on but you need to take care that the colour is not too tacky and that it fits well with the colour of the house. In fact, there are useful apps that can help you determine the look of your new façade with the door. If you are left with a lot of paint after repainting the door, you can use it to paint the window sills and the backdoor as well.
Camouflage the Utility Boxes
There is nothing more irritating for a fastidious homeowner that an ugly-looking electricity box or a meter on the outer part of the house. The most annoying thing about this fixture is that you cannot remove it or reposition it, so you are left with only one option: camouflaging the damn thing! In most cases, the electricity or the gas company will not have much against repainting the protective box, as long as you don’t tamper with it. The most obvious choice of colour is to match it to the colour of the façade in order to conceal this black bulge. However, if your windows and door are blue for instance, you can paint the electricity box blue as well. This way, you will turn this eyesore into an appealing detail on your house.
Spruce up the Pathways
Whether they are located in front of the house or at the back, paths have the potential to make or break the overall appeal of your property. Before you do anything to them though, you need to see if any additional pathways need to be laid down, especially in the back garden. The entire backyard needs to be easily accessible without the need to tread across the lawn all the time. If you own an organic vegetable garden in one corner of the backyard, you should have paths leading towards as well as internal pathways granting access to each and every plant. If you lack resources for stone, marble or brick paths ways, you can always choose to use gravel. It is inexpensive to get but it looks nice and convex a sense of opulence. Whichever paving material you decide on, don’t forget to form edges by using flowerbeds or a low white picket fence.
Erecting a Patio
Owning a backyard is one thing but no yard is fully functional with a patio inside it. The thing is that the outdoor space behind the house needs to have a focal point that will serve as a centre of social activity. Any outside features you might want to install, like a kitchen and a garden setting, will require the elevation and the overhead protection a patio provides. However, building a patio is a complex task but if you turn to professionals such as Interline Manufacturing they will help you choose the most economical model that is easy to install. When ordered as a whole, you get the chance to choose the colour of your patio and you get a warranty that lasts a decade and a half. This means a lot of summer days of sipping cocktails protected against the sun and many autumnal days sitting outside although there is a shower.
Let There Be Light
Remember how we said that there should be some decoration alongside the edges of the paths in the backyard? Instead of flowers, you could use garden lampposts that will illuminate the house at night. There are lanterns that are powered by solar energy, so you’ll save on electricity consumption as well. Also, you can bulk buy them from the local garden centre and then strategically place them both around the driveway and the backyard. They will increase your curb appeal and make it possible to spend time outside after dark. During those long, hot summer nights, they will draw insects away from your house and the more illuminated your house is, the less likely that burglars will target it.
A New Mailbox
If you own a mailbox, then you probably don’t think much of it nor do you believe that it can be the centrepiece of your house’s curb appeal. In reality, the mailbox is the first thing, people who pull up your driveway notice, so a shabby and rusty box on top of a rotten wooden pole is not very representative. A new mailbox that looks attractive does not cost more than 100 dollars, so this is an investment that pays off as people will notice that you take care of every last detail. The red flag on the mailbox will soon become a banner of your property’s spruced up exterior.
A Stylish House Number
As you have seen from the example of the mailbox and the utility box, the outside look of your house is all about the details. That is why something seemingly insignificant such as a house number can make a big difference in décor. Get rid of the old minuscule piece of tin and replace it with a more stylish variant of it. The numbers can be out of metal and nailed directly into the wall. Furthermore, if you are redoing the façade, the house number can actually be an indentation in the wall that has ambient lighting so it will glow after dark. Replacing the house number is an easy DIY job as it takes half an hour to unscrew a couple of bolts.
As we move towards a new summer, the weather conditions are getting better and better. This means that you should spend more time outside, so it is high time to spruce up your houses exterior and increase its all-around appeal.
