Tag Archives: curb appeal

How to Care for Your Home’s Exterior

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Your home’s aesthetics goes much deeper than just the interior. Functionality, theme, and exterior all play a role in your homes overall feel. While we spend so much time perfecting the interior of our homes, we must not neglect our home’s curb appeal. Putting a little love and care into your curb appeal shows your neighborhood that you take pride in your home. There are three simple ways to help enhance your home through the exterior. To put your best lawn forward, make sure you include all three:

Seasonal Maintenance

Maintenance is key to your interior’s beauty, and it is no exception to the outside of your home. Your lawn needs to be treated with care. With each season, comes new tasks. Make sure you are keeping up on your lawn, flower beds, and fruit tree maintenance because it is the first step to impressing the neighborhood and enhancing your home’s overall curb appeal.

Make an Entrance

Consider the route people take to enter your home. This is your first impression for guests and visitors. Stand at the street and look at your home. What does it represent? Is the entryway well kept and organized? You want to incorporate functionality into the exterior of your home. Your driveway, sidewalk, and porch should all be easily accessible. Invest some time and money to clean up your entrance way with simple home improvements.

Your Sanctuary

Your home is your sanctuary; treat it as such. Your windows, siding, and roofing should all be maintained. Keep your gutters and windows cleaned, and remember that problems that are left unattended can unravel into bigger issues. Your home’s curb appeal is directly correlated with your home’s exterior health. Be sure to take pride in your home’s appearance with a well-maintained yard.

The care you show to the exterior of your home is recognized. Do not neglect areas out of sight as well. Take pride in your backyard and surrounding areas. You will discover more satisfaction with more work put into your home. This is your kingdom; treat it as such!

Landscaping in Arizona

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If you are new to the desert or just looking to improve your landscaping, you came to the right place. Arizona landscaping and curb appeal can be very different from other typical climates in the United States. While grass lawns can still work in some parts of Arizona, they can be very high maintenance. While the desert creates some dilemmas, it also opens a new world of possibilities and beautiful features to consider adding to your home. Your landscape encapsulates all the visible features and outdoor aesthetics your home has to offer. Creating your landscape is an art and making this masterpiece will call for a couple of key elements:

Lawn

Where green may be the primary color theme through of other landscapes of the United States, it comes a little less frequently here. Grass may not be the best choice for this climate, but that does not mean you need a blank, dirt yard. Colored gravel with warm burnt tones can really give your yard a pop of color. You can even create beautiful rock beds and patterns/designs with different colored rocks. You may also want to include sand, pebbles, and concrete for their durability and lack of dependence on water.

Plants

This arid region makes most plant life hard to maintain, but also has many dynamic landscaping opportunities to explore. Adding a splash of color can really spruce up your dry yard. Cacti are very common plant life that many Arizonians add to increase curb appeal. Try including other drought-tolerant plants like red yuccas, roses, or honey mesquite trees. These plants are tolerable to some of the dust, soil, and heat of the desert. You can also add some great fruit trees like lemons, grapefruits, oranges, and more in this climate. Palm trees can add height to your lawn or adding large cacti as well. Just be sure to create a diverse landscape with a mix plant life of all sizes, shapes, and colors while allowing them to complement one another, not work against each other.

Focal Point

Add an element to your curb appeal to help make your home “pop.” Water is scarce out here, but some fountains are beautiful and can be real eye-catchers. If you want something more subtle, try making a tree or a cactus your homes focal point. You can add a rock path to a bench or side patio or even add a half wall in front of your home for other focal points. Just try finding elements that complement your home and work with the land.

Arizona is very different than other landscaping in the United States. Discovering and exploring different avenues to decorate your yard can be fun. Try to add some color and a variation of different plant height. Not all of Arizona has the same climate. What may work for a town an hour away may not work where you live. Explore the neighborhood and gather ideas. They say that copying is the greatest form of flattery. Just remember to add some of your own original touches to tailor it to you and your style.

Outdoor Lighting – Make the Night Beautiful

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Most people pay attention to the curb appeal of their home during the day, but what about at night? Outdoor lighting can combine functionality with beauty to create a home that is as appealing in the evening as it is all day long.

This Fulton home provides a good example of combining aesthetics and function with its lighting.

To start, the driveway entrance is clearly defined by low directional lights. Visitors don’t have to rely on their headlights alone to pull into the drive. The carriage lights on either side of the garage door as well as the windows on the door itself ensure that the home is easy to see.

From a security standpoint, the lighting and landscaping leave no places for trouble to hide. Even the backyard has lights that show off the trees while providing enough light to keep that area safe.

The front entrance is well lit, allowing the homeowners to see who is at the door and making sure evening visitors can see the entrance clearly. The walkways are easy to see from the street and the covered area by the front door protects guests from inclement weather while they’re waiting for their hosts.

The lines of this home are personality-rich, and the lighting really shows that. Notice how the rooflines create shadows that make the home even more attractive. Lights shining through the cross-hatched window panes add a feeling of welcome. This Fulton home provides just the right ambience for visitors and party-goers before anyone even walks in the door.