Boost Your Curb Appeal This Summer

Over the last year I have done some minor things to our home that have really boosted our curb appeal. I am excited to show you the changes that have made a major impact. Boost your curb appeal this summer by taking some of my ideas.

Remove Overgrown Foliage & Obstructive Trees

When we moved in, there was this giant pine tree growing ten feet in front of the house. The tree blocked the entire view of the house and killed a large portion of grass underneath it. This is a picture from the front of the house.

I like evergreens, but they’re more for privacy hedges in my opinion.

This was the view of our home from the street before we removed the tree.

After three years of pleading with my husband, I finally got him to succumb because I found a really good deal. A tree service knocked on our door and I negotiated a price of $150 to have the tree taken down and the stump ground, we kept the wood. After new grass had seeded, the front of our house was more open and our curb appeal greatly improved.

Replace Worn Siding

There is old Masonite siding from the late 1980’s on our home. We were planning to replace all the siding, but after getting quotes and pricing out replacement pieces, we decided to take on fixing the broken parts ourselves rather than residing the whole house. There was really only an issue with rot near the ground on the side of the house and woodpecker holes on the front of the house.

You would be amazed how easy it is to replace this kind of siding, and a 16′ replacement board only costs around $12! Each board is overlapping and simply nailed in. Where each board joins is a metal insert that protects the crack from getting water or bugs living in between.

I started by ripping off the siding with a hammer and flat crow bar. The area that is black is where the siding was ripped off.

The lighter colored pieces of siding were the replacement siding. This was definitely a two person job as extra hands were needed to hold up the piece of siding while the other person hammered. Fortunately, my sister was available to help me with this.

The last step was to push caulking in the crevices and paint everything the matching color.

Paint Front Door

The next phase of our curp appeal boost was to redo the front door. A couple coats of paint and a good wipe down of all the built-up dirt brought our red door that I painted four years ago some new life.

Adding a front door wreath is always a welcoming touch! Somewhere along the line we also added that modern wood bench.

Our cheerful new front door brought a lot of fun to the front entrance.

Plant Flowers And Perennial Landscaping

I added flower gardens around the entire perimeter of our house since moving in almost six years ago. However, it’s only been in the last year I have felt like the perennial plants have produced a beautiful landscape to frame our home. To fill in empty spaces of the flower gardens, I did two things.

• I added large rocks throughout the landscape to add texture and interest.
• I purchased $5 worth of flowering annuals to boost the curb appeal.

In the hanging baskets I did hybrid impatients and the ground received normal impatients as well as petunias. I chose all white flowers this year to help the new front door color really stand out. In the past I’ve planted red flowers to compliment our old red door.

Boost Your Curb Appeal Before And After

The before and after is always fun to see the improvements!

This is the original listing photo.

Here is a photo from the front with the old tree in the way, no flower gardens, and deteriorating siding.

This is after our efforts to boost our curb appeal.

Other things I have considered are adding shutters, window boxes with flowers, and doing an addition on our entry foyer. I don’t know if any of those things will ever happen, but I’d love to know what you think of those ideas? Do you have any other suggestions for ways you can boost your curb appeal or mine? I would like to hear from you!