Summary

💕❤️❤️We love you all so much for supporting this podcast just by listening. Consider clicking the link below to donate a small amount monthly to help us produce future episodes. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you!👌🏽 This week we are discussing curb appeal and how to use it to enhance the look of your home. There are many simple fixes you may feel that seem like common sense. However, they really do make a world of difference in how you feel about your home and you feel about yourself. Let us know your thoughts by emailing us at: [email protected]. We love hearing from you! Dee & Alicja😘😊 — Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/teaoverinteriors/support

Episode Transcription

*Podcast episode dialogue transcribed with #Descript. Click here to learn more. Some errors may exist as this transcription is computer generated.

046: How to Use Curb Appeal to make Home Feel More Stately

Dee: What are you doing?

Alicja: Fixing my Uggs because of the insert.

Dee: You have Uggs house slippers. You fancy I don’t know. Alicia, you fancy.

Alicja: You’re really funny right now

Dee: You taking my capsule wardrobe tips to heart, When I said, don’t be wearing holy stuff around the house.

Alicia’s like Nope. I wear Uggs around the house. I got a fancy robe

Alicja: These are so old. Let me tell you these are so old.

Dee: But it’s okay. Because if they’re still in good condition, that’s, what’s great about buying quality. You could say ooh these are so old and they’re still good, you know?

Alicja: Mm. I need an insert. Anyway, mama, are we doing this?

Dee: Yeah, let’s do this real quick. Ready? 3, 2, 1.

I’m D.

Alicja: And I’m Alicja.

Dee: And thanks for joining us for another episode of Tea Over interiors guys. We’re so happy to see you today. We’re gonna be talking about curb appeal.

Yes. But get to that, what did you say Alicja?

Alicja: No, that’s good because we are embarking upon that season. So [00:01:00] yeah. I’m excited about this conversation today.

Dee: All right. So before we get to that, Alicja, you know, I needs to know girl, what your sipping on

Alicja: I’m having the buttered rum. I let it steep a little more and it is very nice it has a little bit of a nutty flavor to it.

So I’m drinking that, but giving it another chance, giving it another shot.

Dee: Well, that’s good because I’m giving almond spice another chance, cuz I know the first time I drank it, I wasn’t too impressed. I felt like I didn’t taste anything and I did steep it for as long as they said, but this time I steeped it overnight and I added a little more.

I added a healthy teaspoon. Okay. So I’m thinking that’s why it, I can taste it more. So I do like the almond spice. So that’s what I’m sipping on.

Yes. So, so let’s get to it. Onto today’s topic, curb appeal.

Alicja: Okie Dokey. Excited [00:02:00] about it. Yes.

Dee: Yeah. Curb appeal. Okay. So, you know, we’re a holistic interior design approach podcast? So we’re always talking about how things make you feel in your home after a long day. Alicia, I know when you pull up to your driveway and you see your house, the lights on, I know you’re like.

Oh, look at my house, waiting to greet me.

Alicja: That’s true. I do feel that way.

Dee: Imagine having a bad day and pulling up to your house and the roof shingles, the hanging, the address numbers fading, the door paint is chipping. Your house paint is chipping and you know, you wanna get these things taken care of that just makes your day even worse?

Alicja: Mm-hmm

Dee: You drive up and you’re like, Ugh. . It doesn’t make the day better. So that’s why we’re talking about curb appeal. Curb appeal is not just for when you’re staging your home for sale, but it’s really for you. Yes. Your neighbors will love to look at your beautiful house, but this is really all about you and your family and [00:03:00] how you feel when you pull up to your house every day.

Alicja: I gotta tell you, you really wanna make sure that your house number is very visible.

There’s nothing worse than that. Someone looking for your house to make a delivery and they have no idea what number the house is. They have to look at the houses next to you, to the right and to the left, or across the street to figure out what your house number is. And it’s a guessing game. So if you want your packages delivered to the right house, make sure that your house number is very, very clear.

And I think the house numbers can also have a personality. So I think it’s important to research. What type of look you want, what type of house numbers you want and make sure that they’re very, very prominent and visible. Find a spot for them that no one could miss.

Dee: I have tips to quickly transform your curb appeal.

Alicja: Oh, I’m excited. Let’s hear.

Dee: Yeah. So the first thing would be your front door.

Your front door is the focal point, [00:04:00] so go pick a fun color that matches nicely with your home and just go for it. You could try any color, you know, there’s these pinks,? We saw today, calamine pink. That’s a cute color for your door. If you have a white house, you know, you could do orange, you could do greens, you could do reds.

There are so many paint options out there. Just give one a try and really make that front door, pop, and make sure it’s a color that you would love to see every day that you come home. That’s one thing, your door is your focal point or you can buy a beautiful bespoke wooden door.

Like if you have a arts and crafts home, maybe you wanna get like a wooden door that’s,, customized or whatever, have fun with it. This leads me to my second tip. Replace the old hardware. Now you have your entry lights by your front door.

Change those if they’re old. Change your lock set. If it is not really doing much to [00:05:00] the house, buy something kind of, you know, fancy, change your mailbox if it’s wall-mounted or even if your mailbox is not wall-mounted, but here’s the trick.

You want them all to be the same color don’t mix and match. The reason why is because your house is the largest part and it’s one color or whatever. And that’s your, base color. These are your accent colors. And when you have a strong accent color, it really makes it pop against the house.

So if you have a more contemporary home, I would go with brushed nickel, finish on those items, lock set, and wall mailbox. If you have one light fixtures that are around the house planters, if you have enough room to have planters by your door, then make everything the same color because that concentration of color gives a nice accent.

If you have a more traditional home, go with brushed bronze. I love brush bronze. Okay. So that leads [00:06:00] to my next tip. Number three. Create symmetry. If you can, by your front door. It is so pleasing to the eye when things are symmetrical. And it’s the easiest thing for you to do.

If you’re not good at creating asymmetrical compositions, then symmetry is the way to go. It looks more beautiful. It’s traditional, but it looks very well put together and it’ll create an instant wow factor. Now that leads to number four, the porch, or if you have like a little porch area in the front of your house, a large area wrap around porch, whatever.

Let’s put some porch furniture there and let’s have that furniture match. All the fixtures that are outside your house, it doesn’t have to be exact, but they should be very close in hu in order to give it that pop. And if you have a rocking chair on the front porch, which is so nice if you have a rocking chair, you know, you wanna do an accent color on the rocking chair, something fun, maybe some white [00:07:00] cushions, maybe some colored cushions, but keep the base of everything that you’re putting out about the same color, you know, the planters, the furniture, but the flowers can be whatever color you want it to be.

That’s your accent to help bring those colors alive.

Alicja: I wanted to discuss some of the stuff that it’s not hard to do. You may have to plan them because they are structural and that would be having boulders or nice large rocks delivered to your house.

Cause nobody can pick those up. They help to create a very organic and natural-looking hardscape. And the hardscape is basically The bones of, the landscaping. it’s like the skeleton, you know, you wanna have stuff there that kind of suggests stability and solidness things that will make your house feel substantial and solid, not just a quick [00:08:00] fix type of thing.

So you do wanna plan that also an Arbor or an arched entryway to the side of the house gates that allow access to the driveway if you have a long driveway. So to kind of create a presence with the hardscaping and architectural elements. Will over time, give you a foundation for adding in the landscaping.

Dee: Number five, that’s the walkway lighting is so important, especially for your safety and security. And plus, if you’re like me, you might be a little clumsy. So you wanna make sure at night you can see your way. So if you can hardwire lighting great.

If you can’t, there’s solar lighting, solar lighting is not as bright, but if you put enough, you’ll be able to see the path and also accent those trees. Why? Because people like to hide behind trees. We’re talking about safety here? Trees can be dark [00:09:00] at night, especially depending on the size of your trees.

So you might wanna light up those shrubs. You might wanna light up those trees with some accent lighting and plus it looks more beautiful. And no one’s gonna wanna come on your front porch that doesn’t belong there. Cuz you got all this light going on. Plus you got your ring camera or whatever else you got outside.

That’s monitoring your home. Nobody’s gonna wanna come there unless they have been invited.

Alicja: Lighting yes, the walkway, and the trees, but the actual face of the house and the sides of the house, not just for security, but like you have seen up lights, but if you literally light the house, I’ve seen that done so effectively that it makes the house feel kind of stately when you want to make sure that the house is visible.

I haven’t done that yet. And I do intend to do it at some point you can do them with solar, usually, they’re, they’re typically hardwired, but you can do that with solar lighting nowadays as well.

Dee: So number six. Container gardens. If you have the [00:10:00] space, go ahead and create your little garden. You don’t have to put it on the ground. You can go out to a nursery, and buy some beautiful containers of all different sizes, but different plants. And you could create a little garden in your front area there to create some nice curb appeal. And those are my tips.

Alicja: I always like to put perennials. If you use Hardy zone-specific plantings, then

you don’t have to worry about doing it every year, every now and again, you can pop in annuals for some different color, but your evergreens and your shrubbery and your perennial flowers and plants that will come back. Every year, those are the sort of things that you wanna invest in and you wanna figure out where those are going to be.

They can be moved later if you change your mind, back to the hardscaping thing, you wanna make sure that even your planting beds that are around the house, either in the [00:11:00] front of the house or along your, walkway, try to border those with stones or some sort of structural elements that will just line the beds so that even if you don’t have the opportunity to fill them all up this year, you could always add progressively.

I think it’s really important to garden progressively, and to create a look over time, if you just like hurry up and put it all down right away. I think most of the time, and I believe this about the inside of the house as well, you could always move them. It’s just a lot of work, but you don’t want to try to do the whole thing in one day. I think that kind of takes the joy out of creating a nice landscape. I know a lot of people go for, instead of grass seeds, they’ll go for putting down turf sod. I like that because it’s a green right away look, but it also does take a lot of work to maintain that green.

Cuz if you’re not watering it constantly, the sod will go [00:12:00] brown quickly. I think window boxes are also a nice and pleasant thing to do.

They give an opportunity for pops of color or either some architectural grasses or vines. The color that can come out of a window box it’s just an opportunity for fun, you know? And it can make you very happy when you look at a house that has a really well-positioned window box and has lovely things coming from it and in it and to add like a metal trellis or some type of metal structure that you could put annual vines on. I think the vines that stay on the house, in the wintertime and die off, don’t look so great.

But if you could have an annual vine, something that you start at the beginning of the season and it climbs on that trellis and maybe has even flowers, that’s a beautiful look.

Dee: What do you think about those Vines being like fruit vines like strawberries?

Alicja: Oh, that’d be great.

That’s awesome. But you know, this is also important to make sure that those fruit vines or something like that [00:13:00] has the proper lighting you know, sunlight because the front of my house can be extremely shady. So you need shade tolerance, and most fruits require a lot of sunlight. Yeah, those were the big go-to things that I believe influence the way the house feels when you approach it, whether it’s someone else looking at it or you, and I think ultimately it’s you that you wanna please, it’s not the neighbors or, you know, the visitors you wanna feel good when you drive up to your home, you wanna feel like it’s a special place that you’ve curated and you’ve created and made special for you and your family.

Dee: Exactly. Because they don’t pay the rent. You do.

Alicja: This is true. Or the mortgage? That’s correct.

Yeah.

Dee: Yeah. Good tips. I love those. I love the way the front of your house looks at night. I think you need to get professional photography done so we can share it cuz it looks so nice. It’s very, thank you. Inviting

Alicja: When I get some, professional photography money [00:14:00] maybe I can get that done.

I would love to do that, that lighting of the front of the house though. I think that would be really good. You have L E D lights or stuff that you can use your you know, wifi-enabled light I should look into that.

Dee: Oh you, did you talk about painting your house over?

Alicja: I didn’t, but you mentioned it too. You wanna make sure that the house has got a crisp coat of paint on it. It could be every five to six years, you know?

Dee: Yeah, mm-hmm. And in between you wanna power wash it every season right

Alicja: Now, houses, they don’t cost $2 to paint. So you gotta make sure that you use the very, very best paint that your money can afford, like a really good exterior house paint.

And it also has a lot to do with where your house is located houses on the water, the ocean, get a beating. So it will be more often than you have to paint it because that’s sea salt air. That’s no joke. But if it’s in the mountains, then you’re gonna get a lot of, you know, harsh, cold and ice and [00:15:00] all of that.

So you just have to be mindful of it. Where your house is. It’s in, you know, a hot area, arid, really dry area, the desert, you know, just be mindful That’s why a lot of people build the building materials and the architectural materials that are used for structures in those areas are usually conducive to the longevity of the structure.

So like I have stucco and siding property, it’s a combination of two different materials and, I live in the Northeast, so it gets very cold here.

Dee: Great information. So guys send us your photos. What does your house look like on the outside? We’d love to see it. [email protected] or add us on Instagram at Truesdale_Morrison_Design. We’d love to see it and we will reshare it. So until next time guys, we’ll see you then. Bye.