The front porch serves as an entry point for your house. It should exude a warm and welcoming vibe. First impressions are important, so you should make sure that this place looks pleasing and presentable. Otherwise, your house may receive some unfair criticisms. But what should you do if your porch has seen better days? If that is the case, then a makeover should be in order. And at this point, you can go the extra mile and make your porch easily adaptable for any season.
Extend the Space
Many porches are merely elevated platforms made as a quick receiving area for visitors. There are some that can fit a couch and a coffee table. This can be the place where you greet the morning and have breakfast. If you want to make an artwork based on your big ideas, you need to have a canvas large enough to contain it. For that reason, you might want to extend the area of your front porch so you can have more creative freedom. That is especially crucial if you want the place to be able to handle the characteristics of the seasons.
You want your porch to be large enough that you can move freely around it when you need to make cleaning or adjustments easier. If you need to haul tools or any other equipment you need, they can be laid down in corners where you can access them right away.
Plant Life
Chances are that you have a lawn right in front of your porch. It would look barren if you only have trimmed grass there. To liven things up, you can populate that with plants that have decorative leaves and colorful flowers. This is a great way to add an organic element to the looks of not just your porch, but the facade of your house as well. Plants are known to absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, so make this your regular hangout if you want to get your daily dose of clean air.
You should have your plants displayed in pots, whether you have them hanging from the porch’s ceiling or just have them arranged in a row on the ground. This way you can move them easily, and this makes the setup immune to season changes. If ever the transition is not friendly to some, you can just uproot and dispose of them from the pot and then replace them with new seeds.
Provisions
If you are due for a porch repair, you can instead go for a full-on makeover and install some provisions to prepare it for the changing seasons. One example would be placing some curtain rails all around. The porch is a fairly open area, and you want to give it protection from the rain, heat, or snow. The rails will let you replace your curtains easily. So you can go from using a fabric one during summer, then switch to one made out of polyester when it rains during spring. Installing foldable or retractable awnings is also an option. Those will provide a wider area of shelter and still preserve your view of the road.
There are other provisions that you can add for different purposes, such as parking spaces for bicycles, extra electrical outlets if you want to have string lights during Christmas, or a faucet for watering your plants and cleaning purposes.
Kid-Friendly
If you want to have playground equipment like swings or slides, they are best suited for your front lawn. These are also lively additions to the front space of your house. The great thing about it is that the porch can serve as a resting area for the kids. You know how energetic they are and asking them to get inside the house to take a break could get messy. That will also be short-lived because they would just run outside after a few minutes to play again. Having an area nearby that they can go to for pit stops. By the time they tire themselves out, you will be sure they will be ready to get back inside.
The open space of the lawn allows you to enjoy what the seasons have to offer. This is the place where you let the kids make snow angels during winter, have water-gun battles during summer, or rake up dried leaves during the fall.
Each season has something nice to offer. If you want to witness their beauty, it is best to do that in an outdoor setting. The porch is the perfect place for that since it gives you a comfortable place to sit in and also lets you view the environment outside. If you think yours is a bit limited on features, maybe it is time to give it a makeover for the seasons.
