Before & After: A $40 Front Porch Makeover

After moving to our house in April, we noticed that all the neighborhood cats had one thing in common: they liked to use the dirt-filled area next to our front door as a litter box. Fixing this was high on the priority list, and last weekend, we found a green—and cheap—way to do just that. Want to see how it looks now?

A family member offered us 30 paving stones that she had used for her back porch, but changed the shape of her deck and had no use for the leftover stones. Since our area was six feet square, we just needed six more stones to fill in the area.

We bought one eight-foot length of lawn edging, three bags of river rocks, and six additional paver stones, for a total of $37, and made over our front porch. (“We” being my fiance; I only helped spread the river rock over the pavers at the end of the project!)

Now it’s a cat-poop-free area, and our project coincided with cooler temperatures, making it the perfect place for us to sit in the evenings and mingle with neighbors. Not too shabby for recycled stones and a few bones, we think!

(Images: Amber Byfield)

(Re-edited from a post originally published on 9.20.2010 – CM)