Curb Appeal - Round 1

The weather in Minnesota these past few days has been just GORGEOUS!  You can feel the distinct "crisp" of almost-fall in the air and I'm totally diggin it.  Fall is my favorite season - boots! jeans! sweaters! crunching through leaves on walks!  What's not to like!?!?

Having some beautiful days over the weekend inspired me to finally give our front entrance the first parts of a multi-step facelift.  And boy was it needed.

Sunday morning found me sitting on the front steps in grungy clothes, happily painting away while watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy on my iPad.  Quite the picture, huh?  I'm nothing if not a classy DIY girl.

By adding a few plants, some new house numbers and those fresh coats of paint, I made a couple solid steps toward a much more "Welcome to our house that we're working on fixing up bit-by-bit!" feeling for the front entry (instead of the "whatever, come in if you want" feeling it gave before...)

Here's a before....

(and, per the usual, Fitzgerald didn't want to be forgotten about)

Whoof!  It was a MESS.  The paint on the steps was chipping like a week-old manicure and that railing just wasn't helping the situation either.  I decided to paint the railing black to tie in with the new dark house numbers and the hardware on the door.  The stairs just got a fresh coat of grey paint that we found in the basement from the old owners.


And now....an after!

I smile when I drive up to the house now!  The railing pops in front of the house and it ties together the house numbers and hardware too.  Fresh grey steps make it look like people actually care about the house you're driving up to.  And a few plants don't hurt either!

Next up in the process is replacing or redoing the light fixture and painting the front door a different color (teal? navy? orange? I can't decide!) I'd also like to build a plant holder to take the job of that tall metal one in the picture...I happened to hide the fact that it's actually a stand that is supposed to be pushed into the ground.  Thinking maybe I can use some scrap wood to build a frame around the stand?  We'll see :)

Now on to a tiny little DIY project...

Over Labor Day weekend I made the wood board with the new house numbers on it. You may have seen the little glimpse on instagram!  Here's the process of how I did it:

The first step in the process was to choose a stain color for the backer board for the numbers.

My go-to stain for a lot of projects is Varathane Kona.  It's rich without being too red or orange toned, so it usually matches my style.  In this case, I wanted the boards to be a little lighter so the house numbers would stand out.  That brought me to one of my other favorite new stain colors, Varathane Sunbleached.  It's great for when you want a weathered look that isn't dark.

Neither Sunbleached or Kona were quite right for the project, so I decided to do a little mixing and create a color of my own.  I used about a 1/4 cup of Sunbleached and just a teaspoon of the Kona to get the color I was looking for.

After measuring and cutting down my scrap wood, I was ready to stain!  After 3 coats of my special mixture, the wood pieces were looking exactly how I had imagined them.

And holding one up to the house confirmed the color was right!

Once the boards were dry, I glued them together with some liquid nails.  Since they weren't going to be holding up too much weight or moved constantly, screws or nails weren't necessary.  Plus, it kept me from having to run to the store to get some kind of really thin board to screw them too :)

I gave the completed, glued together boards a quick coat of Thompson's Water Seal to protect them from the elements, and then let the whole thing dry for a few hours.

Next was the numbers!

The new house numbers came from my number-one BFF, Home Depot.  I swear I spend WAY too much time there.  I could browse all day.

Anywho, the numbers had caught my eye a while back and I thought they would be the perfect modern-meets-homey touch to the front entrance.  They come with templates for installation and screws to put them in either floating or flush.  I chose to use neither of those tools because I am a rebel. So there. (and also, it wouldn't have worked with the way I wanted it to.)

Since the screws were too long for the boards and I didn't want to screw all the way into the house, I decided to just glue the numbers to the board.  The spacing was just eyeballed because I didn't feel like cutting out the stencils.  

After adding 2 picture hooks to the back of the board and popping a couple nails in the house, the new numbers were up!  And I am totally in love with them.

I'll do an update post a few months down the road to let you know how the numbers are holding up and if I would do anything differently.  In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy looking at a spruced-up entry when I pull in the drive!

Linking up @:

- Sugar Bee Crafts

- A Stroll Thru Life

- The Makers

- Work it Wednesday

- Snap Creativity

- Ginger Snap Crafts