Early Spring Front Porch

I am a DecoArt Core blogger for 2016-2017.  This post and paint is sponsored by DecoArt, but all opinions and styling are all mine! 🙂

Happy 1st day of Spring!!  We have had some crazy weather here in the south the last few months – from 70 degree temps pretty much the whole months of January and February to back down in the 20’s in March.  I am ready for spring to be here for good!  So since the cold snap of last week is hopefully the last… I took the chance to work on cleaning up and sprucing up our front porch for spring this past weekend.  I am calling this an early Spring front porch because we are about to get covered in a cloud of yellow pollen for a month, and I would like to build some flower boxes and add some ferns out here so some more cleaning and change will happen later in April/early May. 

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I stopped in Lowe’s just to see what kind of plants and flowers they had in (I’m a Home Depot girl all the way but always seem to find the best garden center markdown’s at Lowe’s)  Sure enough I found a good bit on clearance after the crazy cold snap we had – I picked up these red Begonia’s for $0.25 a pot and some daisies and other plants for $0.10 a pot!  With a little extra attention and watering they should look perfect in a week or so!

The pillows are just some inexpensive pillow covers I got from Amazon.  The price goes up and down – when I bought them a month or so ago (they come from China so take a few weeks to arrive) they were a little cheaper but still not a bad deal now.  My porch is covered so they won’t get wet – will just get sun for a few hours a day.

I still love my swing especially when the weather is pretty in the spring!  You can read all about how I furnished my front porch last summer by finding lots of deals at yard sales – yes those rocking chairs came from yard sales!

I always dreamed of having a big front porch and this one is just lovely!

We have LOTS more yard work and outside work to complete this spring – painting the shed, staining the fence, putting in more beds, planting more shrubs and flowers, re-mulching everything, doing a ton more trimming (got most of that done 2 weeks ago – whew!), plus pressure washing the house once the pollen is done, and painting the front door and shutters.  So since we had some warmer days, I went ahead and tackled painting the front door and shutters to get a start on that list.

I used this new product from DecoArt specifically designed for painting front doors and shutters – DecoArt Americana Décor Curb Appeal paint.  This is similar to their Americana Decor Outdoor Living paint which I used to paint one of my rocking chairs and loved that paint.  The difference is that the Curb Appeal paint is semi-gloss (which you would want for shutters and doors) and the Outdoor Living comes in Eggshell.  Plus the color options vary with the Curb Appeal paint coming in common colors for shutters/doors and the Outdoor Living comes in lots of different brighter color options perfect for accessories.  And the Curb Appeal paint comes in a larger container (I didn’t even use one whole bottle to completely paint 4 shutters, touch up 8 more, and re-paint a front door) and it dries super fast allowing you to shut your door much sooner.  That is always a big concern for me having an indoor cat which I have to lock in a room to paint the front door and now a baby I was worried about trying to escape out the front door. But it was dry in no time and hasn’t stuck at all. 

This was my shutters before – for some reason this left shutter had this matte/darker black color on it – looked like it had been spray painted with flat black spray paint.  And the other shutters on this side were faded too.

Here’s a picture mid-process.  The shutter on the right window in the middle hadn’t been painted and the other 3 had – big difference! 

And here they all are with a fresh coat of paint!  Not even sure it took me an hour to paint these 4 shutters, my front door, and touch up the other shutters.  Simple and easy!

The front door wasn’t horrible but the caulking had peeled some and it had some scuffs and scratches and just needed a fresh coat of paint.

Perfect now!

I’m just loving these simple updates and some simple flowers and sprucing up for spring.  If you were wanting to change the color of your front door/shutters this paint would make an easy, high impact difference!  I changed up my burgundy shutters and door at our old house to black and LOVED it.  I love my black shutters and door at this house so just giving them a fresh coat of paint will help them look fresh and clean.

The black, red and yellow color scheme is bright and cheerful for spring too. 

That yellow pollen cloud has already started.  Ready for it to be all done in a few weeks so I can give everything a good hose down and enjoy this porch throughout spring and summer.

Glad to have one more project crossed off my list too! 

What projects are on your to-do list for Spring?  Have you tackled any flower planting or other outside projects yet?