Inexpensive Curb Appeal

I am always looking for quick, cheap ways to add curb appeal to our house. A few things we have done since moving in are painting the shutters (twice), painting the porch rungs, adding a brick garden wall, planting flowers (seasonal), adding a porch swing, changing out the exterior lights, obvious things such as mulching and pruning bushes and getting a lawn service to green up our lawn. This is our sad-blah-looking house on move in day:

We thought about buying a new insulated garage door, but struggled dropping the money on something that wasn't necessarily 'broken'. I love the sweet charm of carriage style doors, I especially like the unique paneling some of them have.

I also found a garage door similar in size and color to our current one. It's amazing the difference a few brackets can make.

Enter: Home Depot. We were wandering around, which we normally do there about once a week, and I stumbled upon these.

{ buy them here }

Online they are $22.98, but our store had them marked down to $12.98! My thought process went something like this:

Hey Greg, check out what I just found

Wow, that's cool do you think they will look good?

I don't know, but it's worth a shot, right?

... we discussed briefly and started to walk away, when I hurried back and snatched them up

Who wouldn't want to try and make carriage doors for a mere $13.  Greg spent Sunday measuring where we wanted to place them and drilling some holes. It took a little longer than expected due to the awkward silver handle we had in the center of the garage door. Greg had to remove that, add some metal, paint it the same color as the door and BAM! I love it!

What do you think? Are there other ways you have added curb appeal to your house?

xo, Erin