There are two things that have always bothered me about the front of my house since I saw it for the first time when my husband and I were looking at homes to purchase.
First is the brown color of the shutters, front door, and railing. It is just too dark for me. I like more color, and my house has a lot of shade due to trees and a long, covered front porch so dark colors look even darker.
The other thing is the brick columns. They always seemed a bit skinny to me. I’m sure they are the right size to support the roof, but I think that masonry materials like brick need to show their stout nature so probably 4 to 8 inches wider would have been what I would have chosen if I had designed them.
So to change out the colors, I started thinking about a bright color for the front door. Something similar to a leaf green would liven up things but not be too overwhelming just on the door. I also think getting a new door with frosted glass would be nice as well. For the shutters, a muted blue would complement the door color.
As for the columns, there is probably a lot of things I could do to change up the look for the front porch. It would be nice to have the porch another foot or two deeper so there is more room for chairs. But I want to keep it simple since I don’t really see too much need to spend a lot of money redoing it. I’m planning on wrapping the brick columns with 1 inch thick white boards to create columns.
We have had some issues with insects eating the wood railing so it would be nice to replace it with a non-wood material, but I would at least like to paint it white as well to match the columns. I would also paint all the wood trim on our house white to match. We eventually need to replace our windows so those becoming white too in the future would make the front of our house not so dreary.
Remnant Architecture 