The One with... Curb Appeal!

As you can probably guess, HGTV is one of our favorite TV channels. On the HGTV show "Curb Appeal," designers and a crew help give a homeowner a makeover to the exterior of their home.  During our walks around the neighborhood with Pluto every evening we notice and comment on the homes that look nice from the street and we often talk about the changes we would make to give our house some "curb appeal."  Before we jump into the details of this project, let's take a trip down memory lane... 

January 2009 - Here's what the house looked like when we moved in...

March 2010 - With a new roof...

April 2012 - After a little front yard landscaping...

In July we got brand new windows installed throughout the whole house!  When the new windows were in, we quickly realized that everything around it looked a little drab. :(  The shutters looked really faded and so did the front door.  

Here's the front door before.  (Don't mind the creepy creepster in the window and me in my painting clothes in the reflection)

From afar the door looks okay, but if you look up close, you can see that the paint has faded and even started to chip off in certain areas:  

The shutters and the door were all painted this turquoise color.  Even the aluminum around the windows in the dormers and around the garage were the same turquoise.

While we were shopping around for window contractors, we also got some quotes for shutter and front door replacements.  Of course none of it is cheap!  With the big price tag of the windows, we didn't really want to spend another big chunk of money on getting a new door and shutters installed. In hopes of saving money, I researched the possibility of painting the shutters.  Unfortunately, everything I read online said that it was not a good idea to paint vinyl shutters a darker color than it was originally due to the fact that vinyl will contract and expand depending on the heat.  We weren't exactly sure what color the shutters were originally because they are now faded, but we wanted black shutters, which means that we were out of luck. :( 

I ordered some new shutters from homedepot.com and they arrived pretty quickly.  While I was away on a work trip in late July, Dave wanted to surprise me by installing the new shutters.  I ended up coming home a little early so Dave was only able to install half of the shutters.  When I came home, this is what I saw: 

I was SO excited about the new shutters! However, after closer look at them I realized that they were too skinny!  Somehow I made the mistake of ordering the wrong sized shutters for the bottom windows!!!!  They were supposed to be 15 inches wide and instead I ordered the 12 inch ones. I felt SO horrible because Dave had gone to so much trouble and worked so hard while I was gone to put them up! But, he said he wanted to make sure we had shutters that we love...so I ordered the correct size from another company online (homedepot.com didn't have the wider shutters in black).

To reach the shutters on the second floor windows, we borrowed a really long ladder from a neighbor.  Here is Dave carrying the heavy ladder from down the street:

The new shutters are also vinyl and the hardware that it came with required you to pre-drill holes in both the shutter itself and the wall.  Because our shutters sit on top of brick and mortar, Dave had to make sure that the pre-drilled holes were perfect so as to not make a bazillion holes in the mortar.  Luckily having the old shutters actually helped because he could use the same holes in the mortar and simply line up the old shutter with the new one to determine where the hole should be drilled. 

And here are the new shutters!!  

While Dave was installing the shutters, I was working on painting the front door. We wanted a bright red door and we were really careful to pick a good red paint that was neither too candy-apple-y nor too brick-y looking.  We settled on "Indiscreet" by Behr and got the Behr paint and primer in one.  The first thing I asked Dave to do was take down the door so we could sand it down. 

We borrowed a belt sander from another neighbor and because it was so powerful Dave actually did the majority of the sanding.  He sanded down the front of the door to expose the bare wood and I did some of the finer sanding as well as the back of the door (the interior side) using our circular sander.  

I took advantage of the door being off to paint the sides of the door.  After cleaning and sanding, I used Behr "decorator white" interior paint that we had leftover from the bookshelf project.  For the white parts outside I already had on hand Behr "decorator white" exterior paint. (Yay for using up paint!) 

In the picture above you can see the old turquoise-colored storm door.  We wanted to replace the storm door too, but that had to wait until we were at a point where the door could go back up so we could have something to close.  The mosquitoes are out in full force this summer and we're pretty sure Pluto will run away from home if he had the chance. 

Speaking of the dog child, this is what Pluto was up to while we were busy working:

After 5 coats of red paint on the front door and 3 coats of white paint on both sides, I was finally done with the painting!!!  It actually took a lot longer than I had expected because of the drying time.  I could only paint the door once a day because it would have to dry by the time we went to sleep to close.    

Next came the new storm door.  I did some online searching for storm doors before deciding on this one. We picked one out at Home Depot and strapped it onto the top of the SUV.  The instructions said that it would take "45 minutes" to install, but in reality, it took us about 3 hours.  Here is Dave studying the instruction manual and checking to make sure we had all the parts: 

  

The storm door wasn't difficult to install... it was just very time consuming!  We followed each step carefully and read each direction at least twice to make sure we understood it. There were a few cuts needed using a hack saw and we double-checked everything before we cut anything!  The installation started at around 6:30pm and we didn't finish until around 9:30pm (it was definitely dark when we were done).  But, it was all worth it because in the morning, we got to wake up to see the brand new storm door and the newly painted door in the daylight!  

And now... some before and afters! 

Before:

After: 

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

We even got new solar lights for the walkway to give it a finishing touch! 

One of the questions we always get with home projects is "How much money did you save by DIYing it?"  Most of the time we don't really know because we didn't actually get a contractor quote but this time we did!  

Here's the cost breakdown for the front door (all from our local Home Depot): 

And the contractor estimate?  For a new front door, new side panels, and a new storm door installed the estimate was $4,916!!!  We spent about 7.4% of that on the supplies and of course our labor was free!  The cost of our shutters was $265.21 and the contractor estimate was $1050! 

Of course it's not really fair to compare apples and oranges here because we didn't actually get a brand new door.  But we love how our "old door" looks now with a makeover.  With the new door seal, stop, and tape that Dave put in around the door jam, the door opens and closes so effortlessly! So to us it IS a new door!  And the best part is that we didn't have to spend almost $5,000!! It definitely pays to DIY!