Further influence to the development of Colonial style homes are seen in regional interpretations as evidenced by weather and the climate. These homes began as two storied homes with less interior room but soon developed into the widely recognizable and popular four-over-four homes four rooms above and four rooms below. Again, I don't know how you'd do that but I'm sure there's someone out there who does, if the idea grabs you.It remains a popular home style due to its comfortable interior layout and its balanced, simple exterior façade. If there were a way you could add extension to the second floor, finding a way to echo the bungalow second floor effect, I think you'd have something super. Hard to tell clearly from your drawings of the planned changes, but your first floor looks much better. In this case, the overhang on the second floor gives it a solid and significant presence and one can't imagine the house without it. I think your idea to go craftsman is brilliant, and I absolutely love that Porter Street bungalow. I think the shallow pitch of the roof - almost flat - is part of the problem as the similar homes you show with a greater pitch on their top roofs don't look as bad, but the lack of overhang on yours and theirs is a big problem making them all look unfinished or incomplete. That box is crying 'I feel so naked and exposed and out of place'. I don't know 'nuthin' about exterior design but my first impression of your house was that it looked as though a crane had brought in a box with someone's play attempt at a roof and dropped it on top of your single-story house. Will post drawing of front of house with changes soon.

The roof and pergola will have to wait until next spring. Hoping to get a new door and the lights and framing around it done before winter. By early June, the painting and shutters will be done. My budget has shrunk, so now the project has been broken into mini-stages. change siding on bay window to a more craftsman style (picture example coming soon) might add a nice craftsman flower box or two (or more!) around front door, add craftman detailing. across one story section of home, add a pergola supported by double brackets, wood treated shou sugi ban add a metal angled roof, color to match shutters, across the front of the first story, only 4' out from 1st story wall, supported by double brackets change front door to craftsman door, and putting two craftsman light fixtures on either side Remove cheap synthetic shutters, replace with cedar board and batten shutters that I am going to give a 'shou sugi ban' treatment (basically, make them charcoal black and indestructible) To that end, here are the proposed changes: It is much easier to take it in a craftsman direction. Trying to make this house more authentically colonial was too much of a stretch. They've lasted remarkably well, but it was a huge amount of work. We put pavers around the side of our house, and I can't tell you the hours my husband spend with a pick ax breaking up the clay soil to get an even area to lay them.

You'll have to get some sand to lay the pavers in, and you'll need something to tamp the sand level before laying the pavers or they're rock and break. You're going to have to get a jack hammer to break it up and then probably use a pick ax to help pull it out of the ground. Our dump fees are something like $100 a ton. Plan to spend several hundred dollars on dump fees to get rid of it. The issue with doing the paver walkway is the need to break up all that concrete and haul it off. This is what my husband told me one day when we were talking about our neighbor trying to burn out a stump 6' from his vinyl home base on my husband's 30+ years as a career firefighter. And should there be a wild fire in your area, the vinyl siding will melt when the flames get near it. The smoke is also far, far more toxic and if you're caught in it, your chances of dying of smoke inhalation are very high. And more importantly, you want to get rid of the vinyl as it's a petroleum product that will make a house fire much, much worse by trapping the heat in the house, and causing far more damage than other sidings that allow the heat to escape. First of all, mixing brick and stacked stone is tricky to get it not look like you don't know what you're doing. If you can afford it, instead of putting stacked stone on the house, replace the vinyl siding with Hardie Plank for two reasons. Go with one with a grayish undertone-Behr's Aloe Thorn is a great gray green. Greens look fabulous with brick so I agree with the sage green.

Garrison colonial