My Front Porch Is Looking Brand New!

Anyway, when I left you on Friday, I had gotten this far, but I was having trouble getting that last bit of the old, rotted fascia board off of the side of the porch.

I’m happy to report that I finally managed to get that part off without destroying anything that I didn’t want to destroy, and now the whole porch has new, freshly painted PVC fascia boards that will never rot.

I had already gotten the columns repaired and painted, and then with the new fascia boards attached and painted, I stood back to look at the progress and noticed that all of the other trim that was painted white on the front porch looked so dirty and dingy compared to the freshly painted columns and trim. I’m not sure if you can tell in this photo below, but the trim around the porch roof, the window trim, and the door trim almost looked like it was a different white than the columns.

Of course, some of that was just dirt and grime, but even after I cleaned those areas, they still looked like a different color. Here’s a wider look at the freshly painted columns compared to the rest of the white areas around the porch roof. They just looked completely different colors.

I’m so glad I took the time to do this because it made such a big difference. Now it all looks the same color rather than looking like there were two different white paint colors used on the front porch.

I also had to go back and redo the bottom trim around the porch. This was previously painted white, and I decided that I wanted it painted in the same Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray that is on the rest of the house. But when I painted that trim with a new can of paint, it was much cooler than the rest of the house. I don’t know if you can tell in this picture below, but the new paint looked like it had a blue undertone to it compared to the paint that has been here for several years now.

It is true that some of that color on the older paint is dirt. 😀 But even after cleaning off a section, the new paint still had a very noticeable blue undertone to it compared to the old paint. So to cancel out that blue undertone, I rummaged through my stash of paint and found a brown paint that I had used on the striped studio bathroom wall and mixed that in a little bit at a time until the new paint matched the old paint. Since I was wanting to cancel out blue undertones, I needed something on the opposite side of the color wheel, which would be orange. But it needed to be dark rather than bright, and browns are in that orange family. You can see the new mixed paint compared to the old paint (on the cleaned off section between the two white lines) below. It’s still not a perfect match, but it’s so much better.

And now I need to clean the rest of the siding on the front porch so that it all looks the same color. And of course, that has to be done before I can stain the porch boards. And while the window trim has a fresh coat of white paint, the windows are filthy, so I’ll want to clean those as well before I stain the porch.

But here it is now after some pressure washing, fresh caulk, and new paint.

I just love my front porch again, and it’s not even finished yet! It was starting to looks so old and neglected, but now it’s looking brand new again.

One thing I noticed is that I don’t think I ever painted the risers on the front steps when I built these steps several years ago. After I pressure washed everything, I noticed how dingy these risers still looked. There’s no sign that I actually ever painted them. I guess at the time I thought that since I was using bright white PVC boards, they didn’t need paint. But pressure washing did little to bring them back to their original bright white color…

But now they’re painted to match everything else.

So while I didn’t get to the staining project yet, I got a ton of work done! I think I have everything painted now, and I just have a little more cleaning to do, and then I’ll be able to finish up the porch boards.

But before I do that, I needed do a little bit of wood filling over those screw holes again.

So that’s the progress on the front porch after this weekend. I’m so close to the end of this front porch project!