Why you should paint your storm door and 4 ways to create a fall porch

Imagine you are all ready for a fancy date night. Perfect dress, shoes, accessories, etc. Everything is cohesive in complimentary shades of color. Then you realize it is raining so you throw on an old white rain coat.. You may be dry, but it sort of ruined the look, right? Your home’s exterior is a lot like that!

If your storm door doesn’t match the color of your front door, you may be drawing attention to the wrong thing! Storm doors serve a purpose and they sure are nice to have, but you don’t want it screaming to the street or to stick out like a sore thumb!

Thank you The Home Depot for sponsoring this post

When I gave some porch tips on my Instagram last week, I realized that storm doors are one thing that so many of us have on our homes, but so often fail to give attention to. I gave the advice to paint your storm door the color of the front door, and I had so many follow up questions. The only logical thing for Kevin and to do was to makeover someone’s porch and paint one myself! Good thing I have a willing friend who let’s me experiment on her house!

Want to see the result of a storm door/porch makeover??

What a change!!! That storm door now looks like an intentional part of the porch. Her charming home is a cute shade of blue and I obviously adore her cheerful pink door. Their home has black shutters so the black storm door isn’t the end of the world, however, tying the storm door to the front door’s pink and then using the black from the shutters for the planters and layered rug is just so much more “finished” looking!

How to Paint a Storm Door:

• 1– Prep and Clean the surface of the door. This is an exterior door and likely has dust or other debris on it. Thoroughly cleaning the door will help ensure a good bond for the paint.

• 2- Tape off as needed. Kevin doesn’t tape off when he paints! He has a steady hand and is really good at painting! If you have a less steady hand, use some frog tape, or this FastMasq product (so many readers told me about it when we painted the doors to our gym).

• 3-Use the right paint! Not all paint is created equally! This Urethane Alkyd Satin Enamel from BEHR (exclusively at The Home Depot) dries harder than a latex paint and is formulated for exterior use. Kevin swears by this Wooser shortcut brush. A good brush makes a BIG difference! The paint color she used is SweetTart from Behr.

• 4– Remove tape, film, and clean up. If you taped, make sure to remove the tape before the paint dries! This will eliminate the paint pulling up with the tape. If there are drips onto the glass, using a simple razor blade scraping tool will leave the glass clean!

Mailbox // Boxwood Wreath // Light // Outdoor Rug // Hello Rug // Planter // Paint // Door Knocker // Hanging Basket // House Numbers // Battery Candles Lanterns

Bringing Fall touches to the rest of the porch:

Planters of varying Size– Some other simple changes that we made were adding some height and symmetry with these planters from The Home depot. We filled them with flowering Kale and mums for a bountiful fall look. Adding differing heights to your planters creates interest. (Think high, medium, low.)

Use what you have– That brings me to another change we did. Sara had a wreath on her door behind the storm door. Instead of keeping her “high” greenery there, we left the door plain and moved this basket full of stems to the left of the door. It not only fills that space, but allows the door color to make a bigger statement! To duplicate this trick at your home, cut stems from your own trees and place them in small cups of water in the base of a basket! They should last up to ten days before you’ll need to swap them!

Pumpkins! The most obvious FALL change you can make is pumpkins!! The more the merrier (this is the season to celebrate a plentiful harvest after all). I went with all white for her porch!

Layer your Door Mat– The last change we made to Sarah’s porch was her layered rug. She already had this cute “Hello” rug so I just layered a slightly bigger rug under it for some dimension, color and pattern. This is a timeless trick! (Loved this outdoor rug).

Click on an image below to shop this post! I found most everything at The Home Depot! I love shopping at The Home Depot because they carry thousands of on-trend products and pieces to complete any project! I often shop online then pop into the store for finishing things or for the start of a project.

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