This is what we started with…the last house on the street with an enclosed front porch flaunting a fabulous combination of beige and brown. Needless to say, the neighbours were less than thrilled to be greeted by this every time they opened their front door. The windows were in desperate need of an update, the porch came complete with carpet (to keep your feet warm??), and a super drafty front door with a tea towel inserted into the mail slot to keep that winter chill out. But while other people were completely turned off by this, I saw the potential. Challenge accepted.

The first thing we did was take down the enclosure. By doing this and putting up a simple painted wooden handrail, we made the home so much more approachable and friendly. On a street where every house has a front porch and porch parties are such a big part of the community, we were thrilled with the changes so far…and so was the rest of the street.

Brown brick can be a bit of a challenge to design with, so we went with a slate grey for the windows and the same tone for the railing. To add a little pop of colour, we went with a navy front door and painted the floor blue. Initially I was hell-bent on a craftsman style door, but with a lot of these BWV homes there’s usually a ton of woodwork on the interior. To work with this, we decided to go with a larger frosted window in the front door. This allowed all that amazing natural light to spill into the house, but still provided us with some privacy so we weren’t on display for anyone walking by.

One of my favourite aspects of this project was the porch ceiling. I didn’t want to simply change out the light fixture and be done with it. I was looking for it to be esthetically pleasing and at the same time be functional in terms of lighting. We incorporated pot-lights on a dimmer switch, this allowed us to could control the amount of light depending on the time of day we were out there. We stained the wooden ceiling with a custom stain, which added that little bit of warmth and something special I was looking for.

Once we were done with all these exterior updates, we finished it off by furnishing the space. We chose an outdoor rug, some super comfy lounge chairs and an amazing little side table I found at Homesense. I’m all for extending your living space, so I wanted to be sure to make the most of what we had!