What is curb appeal? It’s the first impression a home makes on a visitor “pulling up to the curb.” It’s what differentiates one home from another, what makes it special or seem to be special.
Increasing your home’s curb appeal doesn’t mean having a bigger house than the one next door or necessarily spending a lot of money. Curb appeal can be obtained by large and small efforts and expenditures.
In “Adding Value to Your Home,” published by Creative Homeowner Press, $16.95, it states: “Appearances certainly do matter when it comes to a house. Because the exterior view of a home is the first thing we see, it will invariably influence our impression of the entire home, as well as our impression of its value.”
This importance was not lost on Shannon Lusignan. Two years ago, Lusignan, her husband and two small boys moved into a 50-year-old, cottage/ranch-style home in an old section of Anaheim, Calif..
Neither Lusignan nor the house has been the same since.
Bit by bit, she is adding curb appeal.
Here’s some of what she’s done:
– A light slate-blue color now adorns the exterior window shutters, contrasting nicely with a fresh coat of paint on the entire house.
– The two prominent front windows closest to the street have pediments (think of them as moldings) above the windows. Lusignan combined straight wood and off-the-shelf molding and painted them.
– Most of the windows have window boxes, which she also made and painted white. She grows several types of flowers in the boxes, including petunias, pansies, snapdragons and violets.
– On one side of the house in front, she has potted plants on a white-painted garden bench she made herself.
– On the opposite front side, she has vines growing on a 5-foot-high white-painted obelisk that she also made from scratch.
– A low brick planter extends across the front of the house in which she has a mixture of plants and shrubs.
– A small white picket fence forms the “entrance” to the home’s front walkway.
Don’t get it wrong; this is not a house you’re likely to see on the cover of House Beautiful. It is a simple home much like thousands of others. Many homes in Lusignan’s neighborhood are as well done or better. But Lusignan’s home is typical of what can be done to beautify a home without busting your budget.
“I’d like to do a lot more, but it’s just not in our budget,” Lusignan said. “So I’d look at something I like in someone’s yard or see it in a store and sometimes say to myself: `I can make that myself.’ And then I did.”
Adding curb appeal to her home has not been easy, though it has been fun, Lusignan said.
“This house was a major fixer-upper when we bought it,” she said with a deep sigh. “Nothing had been cared for years inside or out.”
Despite her lack of experience in fixing up a house–this is her first home–Lusignan began by walking through neighborhoods, spotting homes she liked then figuring out why she liked them.
“I’ve also had to ask a lot of questions at places like Home Depot and Builders Surplus and at nurseries,” she said.
Not everything has worked perfectly.
“I’ve made some mistakes on what I planted and where,” she said with a chuckle, “but I’m learning as I go and I’ve made some progress.
“I guess you could say it’s all part of an ongoing experiment.”
Here are a few tips from Lusignan on how to add curb appeal to your home.
– Add color whenever possible, whether it’s in your landscaping or on your house itself.
– Find other houses you like and try to figure out what you like about them.
– Stay with the architectural style of your home. Don’t try to do something modern if your home’s style is traditional.
– Think twice about spending a lot of money on plants unless you really know what you’re doing. Some of what you do will be an experiment.
– Get a lot of information about plants, whether it’s from your local nursery or from seed catalogs.
Advice from a soft-cover book, “Adding Value to Your Home”:
– While landscaping is a major factor in curb appeal, not all landscaping has to be in the ground. You might want to consider hanging flowering plants on a front porch or placing hardy potted plants on outdoor steps.
– To see your home and yard as others see them, take some camera shots. Seeing your house and landscaping on film will create an opportunity for objectivity. Problems will become more obvious.
