Coastal Porch Makeover with TimberTech

Thank you to TimberTech for sponsoring this post. Please read our disclosures.

Living in a coastal environment has several benefits, like the constant warm sunshine and salty air, but those things are not always great for our homes. Our home exterior takes a beating with the bright sunshine, humidity, and harsh elements. With excitement, I can’t wait to share our coastal porch makeover! We have found that we need to replace decking boards frequently due to rotting, cracking, and peeling paint. Instead of replacing the decking boards with wood, we have decided to replace our wood porch with a long-lasting composite decking from TimberTech.

With the ease of designing our porch, we will have our porch replaced in no time! I’m excited to get this project started and I’m going to share the design process and why we selected TimberTech for this coastal porch makeover.

Deteriorating Front Porch

Our front porch has needed a makeover for a long time now. The needs are not purely cosmetic though, the makeover is needed due to a failing structure. The current wood decking is bowing in areas from water retention and sun exposure. Several boards are rotting and starting to collapse. The stain has faded, and the paint is peeling. I constantly worry about my little ones running out on the porch and picking up splinters or cutting their feet on exposed screws.

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We’ve found that our wood porch has required frequent maintenance, needing replacement of several boards each year, and the exhausting task of sanding the porch and then staining it as well. Less than one year ago, we rented a stand-up professional sander to create a uniform surface for staining and let me tell you, I never want to repeat that task again! It was tedious and hard, hard labor. All of this is why we’re going with high-performance decking and railing from TimberTech!

The last thing we want to do is spend more time sanding and staining our porches. The days are long with our young children but the years are short and we hope to spend our extra family time outside and doing fun things instead of performing upkeep to our home. My husband is not a fan of manual home labor and removing any of these tasks will make him happy!

What is Composite Decking

Let’s talk about composite decking and why we’re using it for our home. TimberTech composite decking is made from up to 80% recycled materials which we love because it cuts down on waste. In fact, in 2021, TimberTech diverted roughly 500 million pounds of waste and scrap from ending up in landfills.

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Since TimberTech is a synthetic material, it doesn’t require the annual maintenance wood does such as sanding, staining, or replacing boards and provides unbeatable resistance to moisture, fading, scratching, and staining. The Coastline color we chose is protected by a 50-year fade and stain warranty as well as a lifetime product warranty. The is important to our family because we do not have the extra time for annual maintenance like sanding and staining. TimberTech is a beautiful nature-inspired decking that endures the elements which is great for us with the salt we experience.

Designing Our Southern Porch

From a design and curb appeal standpoint, our exterior has experienced better days. While our home was at its prime in the nineties, the style is now slowly phasing out. With that being said, we’ve decided to give it a makeover, starting with our front porch.

Do you remember when we replaced the round columns in the dining room? Unfortunately, our front porch has several round columns that need to go as well. This is purely preference, but we’re looking to update the exterior and modernize the porch columns. Our plan is to remove the decorative round columns and replace them with square columns. I’m most excited that we’re replacing the fiberglass columns and using the super low-maintenance PVC column wraps from AZEK Exteriors (the sister company to TimberTech) as well.

We spent a lot of time considering the type of railing that will look best for our home. The look of cable railing was very appealing, but in the end, we are going to use the Premier Railing in Matte White that matches our existing railing. The biggest design changes will be the square columns and the color of the actual decking. The 25-year warranty on the railing is also great because we will never have to worry about rotting spindles or repainting peeling paint.

Wide Variety of Color Choices

Our existing porch is stained in a very dark espresso color. While we love the current stain color with our existing home exterior, we have big plans for painting our home exterior soon. Therefore, I’m hoping to replace our decking now with a color that will look great with our future home exterior. TimberTech has the most natural looking colors and wood grain finishes. Here is a look at a few of my favorites.

Coastal Porch Moodboard and Design Plans

If you’re planning a porch or deck makeover, I recommend ordering free samples from TimberTech to help with your design needs. It was helpful getting these items and holding them up against our current boards and comparing them with paint samples. The TimberTech website is really easy to navigate, and you can order them to be shipped to your home!

After looking at the samples for several days, we have decided to go with the color Coastline from their Vintage Collection. We recently installed a backyard patio and used flagstone, which will pair nicely with the color and grain of the Coastline decking.

We’re also using the Premier Railing in Matte White and all of our front porch materials are made by TimberTech and AZEK Exteriors, like the column wraps and stair risers, which makes the project cohesive. For the rest of the exterior project, we hope to paint our home a warm white with taupe trim and whitewash our brick. We also hope to install hurricane shutters and eventually replace the roof with a muted silver metal roof. All of these designs, like weathered wood colors with natural elements, definitely make me think of a classic coastal porch.

TimberTech does not look fake or like plastic, it looks authentic and like beautiful wood. It’s important that our home continues to exhibit a custom coastal look and having natural wood accents are key to this overall aesthetic. I really look to avoid products that do not look real and love that the appearance of the TimberTech products look like genuine wood.

Above are a few renderings from YardZen that we’ve had done to picture our new home exterior. We are so excited to take you along on this journey and we hope to start the porch in the upcoming weeks. I can’t wait to share how we’re ordering the items from TimberTech and having them installed. It will be so much fun to follow along as we create a fun and new livable space for our family!