We did this on our house in TX as well before we sold....newer place than yours :) Old and new brick fades in texas LOL But we didn't find an enhancer, instead used a stain and then did a seal. This was at the advice of our neighbor who had done the same to his place. That texas sun is brutal!!

3,2,1. The dormers will drive all of the decisions. New building codes require more insulation now, and you may have to raise the roof plus add the dormers in order to get the required head room and the required R value for the insulation levels. If you've got to completely rebuild the top floor, you'd be wasting money and time doing any other project until that project is done. Even if you can build adequate headroom dormers with the required insulation levels out of what's there, you'd still be wasting effort to insulate what's there without creating the dormers first. And taking down all of that old charming wood will be required to insulate properly. So, you've got to get the addition sorted out first.

Laundry room looks excessive. Make an opening in the wall south of the kitchen, move pantry into laundry room remove wall where pantry was. Expand kitchen south for more countertop space. You wont be able to completely get rid of that wall separating kitchen from living room, but you can get a decent opening with a beam put in there and get more flow through the house. If you want a larger reno expanding the kitchen into the dining room would allow more opportunities possibly a penninsula with seating or an island.

Well there is one thing I think is pretty unanimous - the doorway between the dining and living rooms will get moved over to the west about 20", allowing the space under the stairs to be better utilized either for storage or a little reading nook/desk spot. Got the toughest decision out of the way first :) I really don't want to mess with the plumbing stack that is behind the built-in.....so unless that's really the only way to make things work, there will be no passageway along that north living room wall. I had thought about moving the heat pump away from the laundry room window and over to the west, on the other side of the garage door, and then converting the laundry room window to a door and having that be our main entry on the back side of the house. I'm afraid it may look funny though to have two exterior doors right next to each other, and I don't want to lose the exterior access to the garage, so that door will have to stay put. I think the laundry room window will need to stay as it is and the dining room door should be the main entrance. We can redo the landscaping & put in a sidewalk that will direct traffic to that door from the driveway. One thing I'm not sure of is if I should do sliders or French doors? Is it weird to have a slider as the "front" door? And how do I handle privacy - the door faces the back yard, there is no house or anything back there that could see in, but I still want something to cover the door at night. Maybe built-in blinds would be best? I love the idea of moving the kitchen to the nook....it would be so nice to look out into the yard while working in the kitchen, but that would mean that we have to use the dining room as THE dining room. I don't think that will work if the dining room door is the entry and even if it weren't, that room is not really suited for a dining room table. It's too narrow and too much of a passthrough room. I tried it out briefly a year or so ago and it didn't work very well. bp's suggestion of closing off the current laundry/kitchen connection and moving the washer/dryer there looks good - we could open up a doorway to the right of the sink and shift the sink/stove/kitchen to the south. Opening up a doorway to the living room from the kitchen would let in light from the big picture window in the living room, so the kitchen wouldn't feel as dark. The rest of the laundry room space (north end) could be used as a mudroom and normal household traffic could go from the garage to the "dining" room and then on to the bedrooms or living room. The one thing I'm not sure about with that plan is where does my pantry go? I would like to have a decent pantry as we do a lot of gardening and canning in the summer and I don't have a basement or cellar to use for storage. Maybe it would have to go somewhere in the laundry area. Thanks again for the terrific suggestions and the kind comments about our little house. It's not perfect and definitely has its idiosyncrasies but it's also got a lot of character and charm - thanks for reminding me of that, I tend to take it for granted sometimes!