Curb Appeal the Weekend Before Photos: A Colorado Checklist

The weekend before listing photos, a Colorado seller has 48 hours and about $300 to $900 to make the front of the house photograph like a $20,000 landscaping job. This is the checklist: Saturday for the work that needs drying time, Sunday for the work that needs to be fresh, and a table with Front Range costs for every item. It assumes the big projects are done or skipped; the one-afternoon wash is in pressure washing 101: boost your curb appeal in one afternoon, and the larger makeover projects are in property makeover: how to boost your home's curb appeal. Neither is repeated here.

Why Colorado exteriors need their own list

Three things age a Front Range exterior faster than the same house in Ohio. Ultraviolet light at 5,280 feet fades a red front door to pink and chalks dark siding in five years. Hail from May to September dents gutters, downspouts and metal light fixtures, and those dents read in a photograph taken at 10 a.m. Magnesium chloride from winter roads rides in on tires and leaves a white film on the driveway, the garage door and the bottom 12 inches of the siding until someone washes it off. Add bentonite clay that pulls soil away from the foundation every dry August, and the weekend list writes itself.

Book the photographer first, then work backward

Ask which way the house faces. A south- or east-facing front is lit in the morning, a west-facing front from 3 p.m. on; a north-facing front is lit by a bright overcast day or a twilight shoot. Colorado's 300 days of sun make midday light harsh, with black shadows under the eaves, so the Kenna Real Estate Group books exterior shots for the first two hours after sunrise or the last two before sunset, and adds a twilight set on homes with a mountain view, a west-facing deck or exterior lighting. A twilight set adds $100 to $200 to the shoot and becomes the cover photo more times than not.

Saturday: the work that needs time to dry

• Wash the mag chloride off. Hose the driveway, the garage door and the lower siding with a car-wash brush and dish soap. The white film comes off in one pass; the dents in the garage door do not, so photograph it at an angle.
• Paint the front door. A sun-faded door is the most photographed square footage on the house. One quart of exterior paint and two coats: $30 to $60 and four hours of dry time between coats, which is why it is a Saturday job. Take the hardware off; do not tape around it.
• Fix the grading. Where the soil has pulled 2 to 3 inches away from the foundation, add topsoil sloped away from the wall at 6 inches over the first 10 feet. Buyers' inspectors write up negative grading on every report, and it shows in a wide-angle photo as a dark trench along the wall. Three bags of topsoil: $15 to $30.
• Straighten the gutters and add downspout extensions. Hail-bent gutter sections are visible in photos from the street. Re-hang a sagging section, replace a crushed downspout for $20 to $40, and clip on extensions so water lands 4 feet from the foundation. Full gutter replacement is not a weekend job and returns nothing extra in a photo.
• Trim what touches the house. Cut back junipers, lilacs and any branch within 12 inches of siding or roof. Denver metro inspectors and insurers both look for vegetation on the house. Bag it or schedule a bulky-item pickup; Denver residents get large-item pickup through the city's solid waste program by request.
• Replace the house numbers and the light fixture bulbs. Four-inch black numbers cost $30 to $60. Bulbs in every exterior fixture matched to one color temperature (2700K reads warm in twilight photos) cost $20 for a set.

Sunday: the work that has to be fresh

• Mow and edge. Mow at 3 inches, not scalped; a longer cut hides thin spots in a Colorado lawn stressed by August. Edge the driveway, the walk and the beds with a string trimmer turned on its side. Sweep the clippings off the concrete.
• Water on schedule. Denver Water's summer rules allow watering up to three days a week and not between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., and a lawn watered the two evenings before the shoot photographs green. Aurora Water, Castle Rock Water and the suburban districts publish their own schedules; run the sprinklers inside the rules, then turn them off the morning of the shoot so the concrete is dry.
• Refresh the mulch or rake the rock. Two inches of dark mulch over tired beds: $4 to $6 a bag, 10 to 15 bags on a typical front yard. Xeriscape rock gets raked level and the weeds pulled; do not add rock the week of the shoot, because fresh rock reads as a patch.
• Put color at the door. Two planters with annuals from a Front Range nursery, $40 to $80 for the pair, one on each side of the entry. In October and later, use evergreen boughs and a wreath instead of annuals.
• Clean the front windows and the storm door glass. Inside and out. A $10 squeegee beats every spray. Take the screens off the front windows for the photo; screens gray out the glass.
• Clear the frame. Cars out of the driveway and off the street in front, trash and recycling carts in the garage, hoses coiled and out of sight, the flag, the wind chimes, the political and sports signs, the doormat with a slogan, the kids' toys and the dog run all put away. Leave one bench or two chairs on the porch and nothing else.

The cost table

The total for the "yes" rows is $205 to $420 in materials plus the optional twilight set. Everything above the line returns more than it costs in the first weekend of showings; nothing below it returns anything in time. Larger projects are ranked by return on the preparing and adding value before selling page, and the eight bigger fixes are in 8 curb appeal fixes for Front Range sellers.

Winter listings: snow, ice and the ordinance

A Colorado home listed between November and March is photographed with snow on the ground, and that is fine when the walks are clear. Denver's ordinance gives residential owners 24 hours after snow stops to clear the public sidewalk, and most suburbs have a similar rule; the photo needs the walk, the driveway and the porch steps shoveled to the concrete and salted with a pet-friendly de-icer, not mag chloride, which leaves the same white film you washed off in July. Shoot on the first sunny day after a storm, when the snow is white and not gray. Icicles on the eaves photograph well and read to a buyer's inspector as an ice dam, so knock them down first. Hang one wreath and put the summer planters in the garage.

The lawn in August, and in a drought year

A Front Range bluegrass lawn goes dormant and tan in August heat, and a photographer cannot fix it. Two evenings of watering inside the rules bring most lawns back to green in 72 hours. A lawn that is bare in patches gets mowed long to hide the patches, not sodded the week of the shoot. Sellers who have already converted to a xeriscape yard have an advantage in photos from June on: rake the rock, trim the grasses, and let the yucca and the penstemon carry the picture. Denver Water's rebates and the plant lists are in xeriscaping your Colorado home: a Front Range homeowner's guide.

What to skip the week of photos

• New rock, new sod, new plants in the ground. All of it reads as a patch for two weeks.
• Repainting the whole exterior. $6,000 to $12,000 on a two-story and a week of weather risk. Paint the door and the trim on the front only.
• Replacing the driveway. Seal the cracks for $30 and wash it.
• Anything on the roof. A hail-damaged roof is an insurance and inspection item, not a photo item; it is covered in what not to fix before selling a Denver home.

Where to go next

• How the Kenna Real Estate Group helps sellers
• How to sell a house in Colorado, step by step
• Marketing your Colorado home to sell
• Denver curb appeal tips from a local
• Colorado distressed homes guide for homes past the point of a weekend list
• Homes for sale in Highlands Ranch and homes for sale in Arvada
• Meet the Kenna Real Estate Group agents

Talk to the Kenna Real Estate Group

The Kenna Real Estate Group, Keller Williams DTC, sends this checklist to every Front Range seller the week before photos, books the photographer for the light the house faces, and adds the twilight set on homes that earn it. Call or text 303-955-4220. A live person answers. Not a robot, not a phone tree. Buying next? Search every home for sale in Colorado.