{five minute friday} 6 Quick Ways to Add Color to a Front Porch

Two years ago, when I was nine months pregnant with Cooper, I decided that the one thing I absolutely had to do before he was born was to freshen up our front porch. Imagine me on the porch with my giant belly painting the doorbell... of wait, you don't have to imagine it because I have the photos.

The changes we made a couple years really did have a big impact on the front porch, but something was still missing. Our front porch is very tall, so we really needed something to add just a bit of height as well as color. Last week, I finally added a plant stand and some colorful potted flowers, and now our porch feels like a much happier, more welcoming spot! Best of all, each one of these changes only took about 5 minutes!

While there has never been a shortage of color inside my house - our front porch used to be pretty blah! I love the stone on our home, but the beige and grey tones of the stone, combined with the grey concrete of the front steps, made for a pretty bland and boring entrance to our home. 

Here's what our front entrance used to like...

Viewed from the street, our porch has been pretty boring, but up close there were a few real eye sores.  Our door mats that had once featured vibrant teal and blue stripes had become faded and worn.  And while I love having our milk delivered by Royal Crest Dairy each week, the off-white milk box sitting below our mail box certainly wasn't the most attractive element of our porch.

Pretty bad, huh? But 6 quick an easy 5 minute projects later, the porch is so much more cheerful and welcoming!

You would never guess I love teal would you?! But now the color on the front porch provides a perfect preview of the colors inside the front door. Let me show you the details of each of these quick, 5 minute projects.

We were constantly hearing from people {in particular, the all important Chinese food delivery man} that our house numbers were hard to read from the street, and that our doorbell was nearly impossible to find.

While I have long term plans to replace our house numbers with something totally different {we'd really like to install back lit numbers} this was a project I wasn't yet ready to tackle, so I needed a temporary solution. Right before Cooper was born, I grabbed my some teal acrylic paint and a paint brush from my craft stash, and I painted the metal house numbers!

I wasn't sure how long to expect the paint to hold up in the elements, but two years later and the teal numbers still look as good as they did on the first day.

Next I needed to replace the sad, sorry looking doormats and I wanted something to add another pop of color to the porch.  As usual, Target delivered just wanted I was looking for.  I picked up two doormats featuring teal stripes an a welcoming message - "HELLO!"

The text on the doormats inspired a couple of other fun additions to the front porch...

I used my Cricut cutter to cut the word MAIL! from some teal adhesive vinyl. I then used wall vinyl transfer tape to apply the letters to the mailbox.

I have since discovered that Expression Vinyl sells outdoor-rated adhesive vinyl. But two years ago when I labeled the mailbox, I just used regular indoor vinyl. Nonetheless, the letters on the mailbox still look perfect despite having been exposed to lots of sun, rain, and snow.

With the mailbox dressed up, I next took on the challenge of improving the look of the boring beige milk box.  A can of black spray paint and more teal adhesive vinyl letters and the milk box went from drab to fab!

Now both the mailbox and the milk box are not only much more fun, but also so well coordinated!

Having solved the problem of the hard to read house numbers, I still needed to address the issue of our nearly invisible doorbell!

I originally tried painting the doorbell gray, but I quickly discovered that the gray paint didn't help AT ALL!

So once again I decided to go bold and painted the doorbell button the same color of teal as the house numbers. {Woah - there's that 9 month pregnant belly I told you about! The neighbors must have thought I was crazy!}

But my crazy paid off, because the teal doorbell button is much easier to spot among the sea of stone. 

Even after making each of those five changes, though, the porch still felt a bit unfinished. 

So a few weeks ago I added one more big pop of color...

For about a year, I've been in search of a plant stand that could accommodate of the teal and grey flower pots that I already owned, but I couldn't find anything just right. Then a few weeks ago while shopping at IKEA, I spotted a cute little three tiered Gunnern table. Even thought this shelf is intended as bathroom storage, I knew it would be fine on my covered front porch because it is powder coated steel.

I planted some spiky grass and Snapdragons in the largest pot on top, and some short but colorful Impatiens in the lower pots. 

I added a couple more pots of Impatiens on the front steps, as well as a couple of fun pinwheels in the planter boxes at the boys' request. 

It's amazing the difference a little acrylic paint, some adhesive vinyl, and a few pots of flowers can make! I love quick and easy five minute projects!

Let's take a quick look at how the front porch has evolved over time...

The next question is whether the front  doors should get a colorful makeover... What do you think?

Let's get social!