Neave Masonry’s Top 3 House Front Entrance Ideas

You drive up to your house and enter your home almost every day. But do you really pay attention to your front entrance?

Is it warm and welcoming? Does it offer a design statement about the rest of your home? Does your entrance have impact?

New masonry work can boost your entrance’s impact in a big way. Let’s take a look at three house front entrance ideas that can take your home’s front exterior from ho-hum to wow.

Pillars

Pillars add instant elegance, whether they’re flanking your driveway or walkway. They can also incorporate your mailbox or a lantern for added convenience and style.

There are endless options for pillars, from block to natural stone to manufactured or real stone veneer.

Designers can help you match pillars to the materials in your home or create a look that complements your home’s architecture.

A popular look is to install pillars on both sides of your driveway, for symmetry, but one pillar can be a nice design element, too, adding a welcoming touch to your entrance.

Pillar Pricing

Cost varies widely, depending on the material you choose, from less expensive block to more costly natural stones.

Manufactured block, such as Unilock, will cost about $1,600 to $2,000 per pillar. Plan on $4,000 to $5,000 for a natural stone pillar.

Porches

Masonry adds instant elegance and a sense of stability and history to your front entrance.

If you have an older brick home and want to add a brick porch to match, keep in mind that finding an identical match is not always easy. If finding a match isn’t an option, the experts at Neave Masonry can find bricks that come very close.

You can also opt for a stone porch that complements your house.

Materials And Cost

Manufactured stone, such as Environmental Stoneworks, offers the look of natural stone, but it’s manufactured concrete. It looks like stone, but costs less.

An average sized Techo-Bloc porch will cost $8,000 to $10,000, including the cost of tearing down your old porch. Natural stone costs more. Expect to pay $16,000 to $20,000 for a travertine or bluestone porch.

Driveways

Driveway pavers instantly elevate your home entrance with elegance and style.

Pavers come in a huge array of colors, shapes and sizes, which means there’s no end to the patterns and designs you can create, including striking accent borders and medallions.

Driveway pavers come in two common materials — concrete and cobblestone. Marble and travertine cannot be used in driveways.

Innovations in technology have made it possible for your driveway to have textures and vibrant colors like never before without sacrificing load bearing capacities, permeability and water retention capabilities.

Durability

When installed properly over a well-compacted sub-base, pavers won’t crack, shift or settle under normal vehicle traffic. Paver driveways don’t crack from freezing and thawing. They’re also resistant to deicing salt and come with a lifetime warranty.

High quality pavers contain pigment all the way through. Remember, all materials will fade outdoors over time at least a little bit, depending on sun exposure.

The Beauty Of Belgian Block

It’s easy to be wowed by the old world elegance of cobblestone pavers, also called Belgian Block.

These popular pavers are usually composed of pieces of granite, so they’re highly durable and will stand up to decades of use.

They’re pricier than concrete pavers, so it’s not common to create an entire driveway out of them, but they’re great for accent edging or as an impressive apron at the entrance to a driveway.

Cost

Driveway pavers cost about twice as much as a poured concrete driveway and up to four times the cost of simple asphalt.

But keep in mind driveway pavers last much longer than other driveway options, with hardly any maintenance. While the initial cost is higher, a paver driveway will pay for itself over time, both in lower maintenance costs and longevity.

Add an 8 to 12-foot Belgian Block apron to the front of your driveway for $8,000 to $12,000.

Plan on spending $30,000 to $40,000 to do an entire average-sized driveway in concrete pavers. This includes the cost to remove existing blacktop.

A Note About Proper Installation

Maybe a friend or neighbor has complained about the quality of their paver driveway. Chances are it wasn’t installed correctly.

Poorly installed pavers by unqualified contractors have tarnished the reputation of driveway pavers. That’s too bad, because a quality installation using top of the line materials is one of the absolute best driveway options.

There are lots of things an unqualified contractor can do wrong that will affect the look and performance of driveway pavers.

If you’ve seen a driveway with uneven pavers, sticking up at different heights, the base they’ve been installed on is probably not deep enough or of an even thickness.

If the pavers along the edges are falling away from the driveway, maybe contractors didn’t install edge restraints to hold the pavers tightly together.

Maybe one area of the driveway has settled. Chances are the base wasn’t compacted properly.

You get the idea. You can choose the highest quality pavers in the industry, but if they’re not installed properly, you’ll end up with a flawed driveway.

Good masonry, installed by experts, will stand the test of time.

Neave Has All The House Front Entrance Ideas

Neave Masonry is your home for the best in custom-built pillars, porches and driveways.

Every project we develop is designed to extend the usability of your outdoor space, improve the visual aesthetic of your home and increase the overall value of your property.

At Neave, we make it easy to boost your home’s curb appeal. You’ll work with a single Neave professional to streamline the process.

Your personal project manager will help you design the perfect property enhancement, and then arrange construction teams and sort out every detail so that you don’t have to scramble around keeping a dozen different contact numbers.

At Neave Masonry, you’ll have one name and one number for everything. We’d love to get started making your home’s entrance a point of warmth and pride.

If you’re in the Hudson Valley, call us at (845) 463-0592. If you’re in Westchester County, call (914) 271-7996; from Connecticut, dial (203) 212-4800. Or, fill out our simple web form, and we’ll contact you about setting up your free consultation.