It’s been a minute since we showed the front of the duplex (blame the winter), but today that changes. Big progress has been made — and honestly, THINGS HAVE TURNED A CORNER!
There’s still no landscaping, the grass is patchy, and Sean the Contractor’s giant sign is up…
…but wow, what a difference when you compare it to where we started.
We removed all the non-original details — the plastic wagon wheels, the abacus trim added in the 1970s, the too-small vinyl shutters, the broken porch railing, the satellite dishes, and even the duct tape along the roofline. At the same time we preserved or reintroduced original charm where possible: the metal porch roof, larger operable shutters, square porch columns, corbels along the roofline, wide brick steps, and those diamond windows that give me cartoon heart eyes.
We’ve shared earlier posts about major exterior decisions like siding, roofing, and choosing the shutter color, so today I’ll focus on the front porch updates.
First, let’s address the tiny doormats. They’re laughably small — postage-stamp sized — so yes, larger doormats are on the shopping list. Try to look past those little rectangles and notice what else is new: matching mailboxes, house numbers, lanterns to illuminate those numbers, composite decking (no rot — hooray!), potted plants, and teak benches. It’s all coming together and I’m thrilled.
We don’t have great close-up “before” photos of the door area, but you can see the mismatched storm doors we removed in some earlier shots.
That “SOLD” sign John artfully included in a photo doesn’t show just how deteriorated the old porch structure was.
The support beams and structural elements were so rotten we had to remove the porch and rebuild it from scratch, carefully preserving the original transom windows above the doors.
It truly feels like we’ve made a major leap forward in the last year and a half.
After removing the storm doors, we decided to keep the original front doors. The town’s historic review board requires approval to change door styles, so we were relieved to love the originals from the start. Initially we debated painting them the same mint as the shutters, but because those shutters get a lot of visual attention across many windows, we wanted a different tone for the doors.
For a while we planned to refinish the doors to a natural wood tone. Our contractor stripped and sanded them in his shop — taking precautions around lead paint and avoiding damage to the thinner, older doors. Despite spending $400 to strip them as far as possible, stubborn paint remained in cracks and recesses, and close inspection revealed cracks and glue bubbles that would be hard to disguise with just sealant or stain.
We considered a dark gel stain — which has thicker coverage and helps hide imperfections — but after installing the porch lights, mailboxes, house numbers, and hardware, we kept circling back to the idea of a rich charcoal paint that would tie to the metal porch roof and balance the cheerful green shutters.
We went with Sherwin-Williams Urbane Bronze, a layered color that sits between true black and a warm dark brown — a tone we already love from other projects. Painting the doors did wonders: it concealed cracks, glue bubbles, and lingering paint, and it complements the dark porch accents like the operable shutters, oversized porch lights, wall-mounted mailboxes, and the new house numbers.
We installed off-the-shelf house numbers from Home Depot. They come with a template on the back of the package, which we trimmed to adjust spacing. We taped the templates to the siding, triple-checked spacing, leveled them, and centered everything before mounting. We also learned the hard way that local code requires numbers to be at least 4″ tall and visible from the street — we almost failed inspection for not having them, so getting those up was a rush.
To bring back warm wood tones after painting the doors, we added items with natural finishes: basket-style ceramic planters that read warm, and big teak benches at the porch ends. Once we replace the tiny doormats with larger ones — maybe a single runner that spans both doors and reaches the planters — that will introduce more of that cozy, warm wood feel.
We also added our favorite faux outdoor trees for low-maintenance greenery. We use the same ones at the beach house and taller versions at our home. They’re zero-maintenance and give the porch presence; I’ll fluff them before the final photos to make them look perfect.
If you follow our newsletter, you saw a peek with the doors open last week. We painted the stair risers to match the interior door colors on each side (Sherwin-Williams White Truffle on the left and Sherwin-Williams Oyster Bay on the right). I love that we didn’t paint the front doors mint — it’s a fun surprise to open the dark bronze doors and reveal a different cheerful color inside each entry.
That before photo is funny now — the riser colors effectively switched sides in the final layout based on how the colors read in different light. We chose the placement that looked best for each side.
And that’s the duplex porch update. Fingers crossed the groundhog called an early spring so we can finish landscaping, mulch, add a back path, seed the lawn, and finalize the exterior. We need to get everything photographed and ready for rental — aiming for listings this spring and Airbnb availability soon — plus the interior and backyard still need finishing touches.
To follow the full renovation story, we’ve documented the last 1.5 years in a dedicated category covering all duplex progress.
*This post contains affiliate links*