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Every time fall comes around, the outside of our house shows the signs of summer. An exterior refresh for winter curb appeal is a must to keep our home looking happy and cheerful! I always love to do a deep clean of the interior of our house as the seasons change, but I don’t want to neglect the curb appeal of our home. There are a few things I try to do in the fall to keep our white home looking bright and cheery.
We lime washed our brick white in the summer of 2020 and I am still head-over-heels for the crisp, clean look. Our siding is painted white as well (Sherwin Williams – Alabaster). A lot of people think that white brick gets dirty over time, but with regular cleaning and seasonal refreshes for the exterior, you can keep your white house looking good-as-new!
We were just about to put our house on the market for our relocation, so I wanted to make sure that our house had a lot of curb appeal. So we gave everything on our exterior a good refresh for curb appeal! We didn’t have much time so we did all of this in a weekend. Here’s what we did to refresh the exterior of our white brick home.
Exterior Refresh for Winter Curb Appeal
Softwash Your Limewashed or Painted Brick
Power washing is so satisfying to me, but when it comes to painted or lime-washed brick I prefer soft washing. I just like to use the pressure washer and just stand WAY back to make sure I’m not eroding any of the lime washed brick. That hasn’t happened to us yet, but brick does erode over time so I always want to make sure that we’re cleaning it gently. I typically power wash the siding of the house though.
Exterior Refresh Cleaning and Window Washing
The front porch really needed a good cleaning. My grandma actually helped me with this project as she’s been over helping us a lot so we could get our house put on the market.
Our front porch is tiled. We wanted to replace it but now that we’re moving, I’m leaving it be for the future owners to decide what they want to do with it. We had a few paint drips and spots in the grout where mildew had started growing over the last several months. It was time to give it a good clean.
I used this Zep Exterior Cleaner to really clean our outdoor areas. I used it in the power washer cleaning solution tray for our back porch, but our front porch needed a little more elbow grease. So, I dumped a bit of the exterior cleaning solution on the porch and used a stiff-bristled brush to scrub the tile and grout. Use a steel wool pad to scrub any hard spots!
I let the cleaner sit on the tile for a few minutes, and then power washed it off. The grout looked SO much better and the mildew was gone. The exterior and the porch were already looking so much brighter.
Zep also has an exterior window cleaner that I am in love with. I just love their exterior cleaning products. The cleaner is so easy to use and it took about 15 minutes total to wash all of our exterior windows.
Exterior Refresh Repairs and Paint Touch Ups
Fall is a good time to make any repairs you need after the summer or do paint touch ups. Generally paint needs to be touched up when the weather is in the 70’s or low 80’s so it doesn’t dry too fast. We always like to touch up our lime wash or paint when it just starts to cool off here!
We also had to repair a front porch pillar that had started to settle. It was super quick and easy to find a stone mason and he had it fixed up in about a day! Then we just had to re-limewash it and it was good as new.
Cold-Weather Flower Garden and Potted Plants
I like to give our front flower bed a seasonal refresh with a fresh load of cedar mulch. With white brick, I like to have some color for winter months. Usually around the second week of October I make sure to plant mums and pansies and kale that will bring a little color to our exterior all winter long!
This year I planted some purple mums and white mums in the flower bed. Then I used some blue and purple pansies for container planting. I added a few coleus in the planters where I have my ferns in the summer. Kale was the finishing touch for extra color!
Planting Shrubs in the Fall
I like to plant a few shrubs in the early fall too. Obviously do this only if you have room for the shrubs – not everyone will need this step. Shrubs and trees definitely need to be planted before the first freeze, so if you miss that cut off, some potted porch plants would be better!
When you plant shrubs in the fall, they focus on root growth instead of top growth. So the following spring, they’ll show more top growth because the shrubs’ roots are already established. This year we planted two azaleas and another pretty shrub here in the front of our house.
Porch Decor for a Quick Update
Another thing I really love to do is switch out my porch decor for the fall and winter. This is a quick way to do an exterior refresh if you don’t have time to do any planting or power washing. I always grab some pretty pumpkins when we go to the pumpkin patch as a family for the fall porch decor.
As it gets colder and the pumpkins get tossed, I add some faux greenery. I like to add a pretty winter wreath on our door. Add some faux potted cedar trees or topiary trees to your porch as well to help bring some color! Use some outdoor pillows with fall or winter colors too!
Winter Exterior Refresh
I love to give our home a fresh look in the fall and winter so that it looks cheery and bright through the dreary winter months. It’s especially important to do an exterior refresh for some curb appeal if you’re thinking of listing your house! I’ve got good news – our porch refresh must have worked because we sold our house in 2 days! You can read more about our move to Kansas City here. Or check out this post about our home listing if you want to see some professional photos of our white brick home!
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