Low budget: Improve front of house, larger porch, covered driveway?

Benjamin Whitehouse

2 years ago

Hi,

I'm interested in ideas and similar completed projects for improving the front of my house.

Ideally I would have the following for as low budget/diy as possible:

- Covered, secure section for garage tools, big or small

- Continued ability to completely close the front of the driveway for privacy as it fronts onto a lane with pedestrian traffic

- Larger, more attractive porch across front of property, possibly making the existing ground floor lounge window a patio door into new porch

The front of the house gets loads of light most of the day, and the lounge is quite dark.

The final stage would be cosmetics, eg cladding upper half or re-rendering as it is currently patchy.

Thanks!

Benjamin

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Comments (2)

arc3d
2 years ago
Hi Benjamin,

Making the porch smaller, not bigger, would be a huge improvement. If the lounge is dark now, it will only get darker if you build a porch in front of it.

I would cover the alleyway and use that for storage, leaving the front free of clutter.

The only way to not to impact the light levels in the lounge would be to extend the lounge by removing the whole wall, but that needs planning and building regs as it would require a beam. Definitely not a budget project. To make the house more attractive I would keep the porch proportional to the house.

As for the design, the house is pretty much a blank canvas and your window dimensions are great. It really depends on your tastes. You could go ultra modern by rendering or wood cladding the whole front and contrasting with the porch. Change to window frame colour to grey...

or go really traditional with matching render, solid wood door and traditional glazing...
Benjamin Whitehouse thanked arc3d
Benjamin Whitehouse
Original Author
2 years ago
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to respond so thoroughly! Great ideas, I love it!
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Low budget: Improve front of house, larger porch, covered driveway?

Comments (2)

arc3d

Benjamin Whitehouse
Original Author

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Low budget: Improve front of house, larger porch, covered driveway?

Comments (2)

arc3d

Benjamin WhitehouseOriginal Author

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Benjamin Whitehouse
Original Author