Start at your front door

April 05, 2001

Start at your front door

Want to make your home more welcoming as you welcome spring?

Start at the front door.

Your front door is a "room of its own," according to Nikki Willhite of www.AllThingsFrugal.com, home of The Pennypincher E-zine and Tightwad Tidbits Daily on the Web.

Your front door is the first impression people have of your home, she writes. If it's warm and appealing, that feeling can come inside with them.

Willhite, who has a degree in interior design, suggests carefully choosing the color you paint your front door. It should be the focal point of your home, and because it's a small area, you can do unusual and dramatic things.

If you have brass - a doorknob, door knocker, peephole or brass plate - keep it polished, Willhite recommends.

She also suggests hanging a wreath: "Wreaths exude warmth," Willhite writes.

For floral designer Dean Gossard, springtime is the wreath season. It's one of the first things people do, he says. "It's almost a nesting thing."

Gossard has several ready-to-go spring wreaths hanging in his Hagerstown shop, West Side Floral Inc., but he does a lot of custom work, too.

He hand-wraps grapevine and finer honeysuckle-vine wreaths to the size and shape he wants.

"If you're working with grapevine, it will tell you what to do," says Gossard, who has 31 years of experience.

He used sprigs of bright yellow silk forsythia on a grapevine and honeysuckle wreath he had spray-painted a sage-colored green. Fresh flowers would work for a wedding or other special event, but the silk blossoms will last beyond the season.

Gossard added a little birdhouse, tiny terra cotta pots with sprouting bulbs, a miniature rake and gardening gloves, to establish a springtime feeling.

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