Lowe’s Front Yard Makeover | Portland, Maine

I’m so excited to share with you the results of our recent front yard makeover with Lowe’s! Deanna Emery was our homeowner selected from Portland, Maine – one of the cities hit
hardest by the past winter – to receive a front yard refresher because she personifies the Lowe’s message of “Never Stop Improving.” Deanna purchased what was originally an eyesore of a fixer upper, and she’s been breathing life back into it one DIY project at time. Although she’s done extensive work to both the interior and exterior of her home, it became clear after this past winter that her front yard landscaping – or lack thereof – was a major concern.

In just two days, Deanna’s front yard was transformed thanks to Lowe’s and the Lowe’s Heroes – a fantastic group of local Lowe’s employees who did such an incredible job – and here are the results!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Lowe’s. All opinions expressed are 100% my own.

Deanna’s primary concern with the front of her home was a bare, unlandscaped entryway which led to tracking in mud, dirt, snow and dust when entering her home. She also had an older garage door which made use of her garage inconvenient, and absolutely zero bushes, shrubbery, or flowers in the front of her home.

Here is a “before & after” look at the entire front of her home:

Deanna had just had her driveway resurfaced prior to us arriving, which is why a portion of her front yard is missing grass. It has been re-seeded with straw laid on top for protection, and soon she will have fresh grass growing and meeting up to her driveway once again.

A before & after look at Deanna’s main entryway:

This new paver patio laid in front of Deanna’s front porch, meeting up to her new driveway, has been on Deanna’s wish list for quite some time – especially after Portland, Maine’s last winter.  This is the primary entrance to Deanna’s home, and the dirt and grass surface made it incredibly difficult for her to shovel in the winter when it snowed.  In addition, dirt and mud were being tracked into Deanna’s home nonstop all throughout the year.

Our Lowe’s Heroe’s came to the rescue with a beautiful new patio created from Lowe’s Allegheny Countryside Patio Stone.  We used a mix of 6×9” rectangles and 6×6” square paver stones with tan polymeric sand to achieve the look you see in the finished results.

To save us time, we used Brock Interlocking Paver Base Panels in lieu of traditional paver base sand.  This innovative new product with patented technology creates a stable platform for paver stones without the need for time consuming deep digging.  One lightweight interlocking panel is the equivalent of five bags of traditional paver base sand, so instead of needing to dig 6-7” for our patio we only needed to dig 3 inches – a huge timesaver!

While some of our Lowe’s Hero volunteers were working on the new paver patio, others were busy in the front of the home creating flower beds for some beautiful new front yard landscaping!

We used the same Allegheny Countryside Patio Stone (6×9” rectangles) and tan polymeric sand that we used for the patio as landscape edging for the flower beds to tie the two spaces together.  Our Lowe’s Heroes buried the front of the paver edging into the ground, flush with the grass to make mowing the yard a breeze for Deanna – no weed-wacker trimming necessary!

We finished off Deanna’s front stoop using metal buckets from Lowe’s as planters and white outdoor lanterns with battery-operated LED indoor/outdoor candles.  The beautiful black outdoor sconces (a DIY project previously completed by Deanna) are also from Lowe’s.

One of the most exciting aspects of Deanna’s Lowe’s front yard makeover is her stunning new garage door!  She chose the Pella Carriage House Series white double garage door featuring black hardware accents and large upper windows.  Not only will Deanna’s new insulated Pella garage door make life so much easier and more comfortable during her next Maine winter – it’s also quite the show-stopper and now the envy of the neighborhood!

Deanna has a beautiful view from her front yard, and loves relaxing outside on her front porch.  To finish off her makeover we added a beautiful new teak glider patio bench and a variety of outdoor decorative accessories from Lowe’s.

More metal buckets used as planters on the patio and porch compliment the metal buckets on the stoop in front of the house.  One of our favorite features is the vertical garden we created using a 72” wooden trellis and 2.5 quart metal paint buckets from Lowe’s.  Deanna works for a sign company and has a love for repurposing items so we added a metal “e” to the vertical garden (the first initial of Deanna’s last name) which actually came from an old Bank of America sign!

If you haven’t checked out Lowe’s fantastic variety of outdoor pillows yet, be sure to add that to your to-do list this week!  I pulled three varieties to use for Deanna’s front porch, but there were so many cute styles I wanted to snatch up the entire store!

Another personal touch from the homeowner’s collection of reclaimed items is this white-framed window which we repurposed into “HOME” wall art.  We simply spray-painted wooden letters and adhered them to the window using adhesive hanging strips.

There is so much more to share with you that I can’t possibly do it in one recap post!  In my next two posts I’ll be sharing more how-to details, shopping lists, and pictures of our amazing Lowe’s Heroes in action, so stay tuned – we’re just getting started!