Southern Front Porch Makeover

• Clean Vinyl Siding
• Prep Painted Surfaces
• Strip & Condition Decking
• Install Fans
• Install Outdoor Lights
• Replace Doorbell Button
• Paint Railing and Shutters
• Stain Deck
• Install New Front Door

To kick off this front porch restoration, I sprayed the vinyl siding down with Wet and Forget with my low pressure sprayer and let it soak on the surface for 15 minutes. This product is typically meant to be applied and then left to work its magic as rainwater washes it off, but I knew that would be difficult under the roof of my front porch. I grabbed a soft wash brush and scrubbed the surfaces, then sprayed everything down with water. The amount of grime that trailed down the siding was truly impressive! Who knew the house was actually white?

The paint on our wooden railings was original from the house’s construction in 1997, and was long since ready for a new coat to relieve it from its duty. Before I could paint, I needed to remove the chipped layers and scrub it down thoroughly. I used Quick Strip Discs on my angle grinder to quickly remove any chipping paint.

Sections of our decking had poorly applied remnants of an orange stain, while others were worn down to bare wood. I needed to get everything back to a clean slate before applying new stain. I used Behr Wood Stain & Finish Stripper stain on our back porch project and loved it so much that I bought it again for this front porch restoration. Then, I applied it liberally with a polyblend roller and allowed it to set for about 45 minutes.

The first thing my wife noticed about this house was these terrible fans. They were too small for such a big front porch, as well as rusted and completely useless. We couldn’t wait to install new fans and actually catch a breeze from them!

We decided to add extra lighting and style to the front porch with new outdoor light fixtures on both sides of the front door. Since we didn’t have existing lights already in place, this job had a few extra steps involved.

First, I marked where we wanted the lights to hang and used a multi-tool to cut out the footprint of a vinyl siding mounting block. I secured the vinyl mounting block with screws.
To run the electrical, I had to remove a few sections of our vinyl ceiling, which was made easier by my Malco SideSwiper tool. I wired the lighting according to the instructions and installed the lights.

We love that these have photocells on top to sense when it’s dark enough to turn on automatically at dusk. Plus, they have LED lights, which help to keep our electrical bill down.

The doorbell button original to the house kicked the bucket sometime before we moved in, so we bought a replacement button, shut off the power at the breaker, and installed it following the manufacturer’s instructions. Again, only tackle this if you’re comfortable working with electricity!

The original paint was oil based, which we wanted to cover with acrylic paint. To do this without issue, we first applied a coat of Gripper primer. This product works wonderfully and dries within an hour so you can start painting quickly. We then applied one coat of PPG Timeless paint which really transformed the railings to look like new. We used a few key Wooster paint supplies like a shortcut brush, 4-1/2″ roller, and a Pelican bucket for painting all of the handrails and trim.

Our black shutters were faded and dull, so I removed them and applied a fresh coat of Behr Premium Plus in the color “Carbon.” It’s amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do!

We chose to use PPG Timeless Transparent Stain in “Oxford Brown” after loving how well it’s held up since our back porch renovation last fall. I brushed it on using a stain brush. This stain was dry to the touch in 30 minutes, and ready to walk on 24 hours later!

After changing the layout of some interior walls at the front of our house, the amount of natural light coming in from our south-facing front porch was really diminished. We wanted a door that would let in as much light as possible. We chose a pre-hung 3/4 light farmhouse style door from ThermaTru and painted it “River Rock” with Behr Premium Plus paint using a sprayer before installation.

To test the fit we removed the old door and lifted the new door in its place. I trimmed down some drywall, hardwood flooring at the doorway, and cut new vinyl trim to ensure a perfect fit. We then lifted the new door back in place and secured it to the door frame using the supplied screws.