You are building a LOT of (expensive) roof there, with a lot of angles and no useable space.
I'd try to simplify. It's too busy for me even before you add stonework to the brick and stucco and timbering. It does look more English than French to me.

Our house isn't terribly different from this elevation, but with fewer gables and materials. We are stucco and over-sized white brick, with limestone trim at windows and doors. Roof is 10/12 over 2900 sq ft + screened porch and terraces. Oversized archtop windows and French doors add interest.

We live single-story, but there is a formal stairway to the second story -- an attic for us, but it can become additional living space for another owner by the addition of dormers. (We wanted something small, but our neighborhood and land cost make a much larger house more typical.)

I think you're on the right track. The complicated roofs are part of the style that you're paying for.

See link for example

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1502587}}

One thing that says French Country to me is the mix of brick and stone, finished with an overgrout technique.

Oh, worthy, I just about bust a gut laughing when I clicked on your link. The Roxborough was the prime "inspiration" house picture we gave our architect. We just asked him to "tone it down a bit".

Here is the drawing that the architect sent us first to see if this was the path we wanted to follow:

We thought it had the right feeling and proceeded from there. DH didn't care for the long, uninterrupted roof ridgeline, so he wanted a portion of the main, hip roof raised.

I know that it is complicated and cuts down on usable space under the roof, but we have about 2500 sq.ft. on the main floor and another 2500 below. Because of the slope of the lot, about half of the basement will allow for some kind of windows & the back will be full height. With a total of about 5000 sq.ft., we really didn't think we (or future owners)would need the attic for much of anything besides access to mechanicals.

I'm attempting to be the "restoring force" on DH to keep the exterior from being overwrought. OTOH, this house is a bit of a fantasy or wish fullfillment for us so we may as well have some fun with it.

Thanks, for the comments. Please, keep them coming - Jo Ann

I certainly prefer the architect's watercolor. All the rest look over-wrought...to me.

Let's put in a call for mighty-anvil! (Our very own resident architect on the forum.)

There's just something that feels 'off' about building huge spaces serve no purpose. (Your attic.) I know *my* frugal French ancestors would titter! LOL

I like the front elevation of your house. I vastly prefer it to the architect's rendering...the house is better, IMO, for the complicated rooflines. I also like the idea of mixing materials...I would ask to see example homes though (at least on paper) before signing up to use the plain stucco near the half-timbered stucco. That combination close together seems a bit jarring.

Pretty house...good luck!

If you haven't looked through Jack Arnold's website and viewed the Gallery pictures, I've linked it for you below. He has several half timbered brick gable house plans, but only one or two pictures of built homes in this design. Must not be very popular. There are numerous photos of half timbered gables with stucco or mortar wash.

Here is a link that might be useful: Jack Arnold

allison -- Those are all LOVELY. And restrained.

I am in the same area as you.
Have you chosen your builder?
I like the front facade. It reminds me of the homes in Montebello or the Cliffs.

Thanks, Chisue. We used Jack and Trey Arnold on our home, so I might be a bit biased, but I think the are all gorgeous.

What makes it more Tudor than French is the steep roofed prominent front facing gables. There is no wall treatment unique to either style.

You need not worry about what is truly French or English because both of these styles originated in America and are rough assemblages of romantic elements rather than based on a particular historical architectural style or model.

Try Googling Cotswold Cottage or Tudor Revival

@ mightyanvil - well, I guess "Petite Maison d'Eglantine" just became "Dogrose Cottage". Hahaha! Hubby will be sad because he wanted "French". Lord only knows why. His one attempt at ordering breakfast in French when we were in Paris ended up with him flapping his arms like wings & hopping around in order to obtain "oeufs en plat". He was on his own that morning so DD & didn't get to witness this. I imagine it was priceless.

More seriously, we know that French Eclectic, Tudor Revival, etc. are American amalgamations and idealizations of "European" elements. I just didn't want this elevation to be too far out of whack. We sort of acknowledged to ourselves, from the beginning, that we wanted something that would probably end up being a pastiche of French Eclectic, Tudor Revival and whatever else, within reason, captured our fancy. I did google Cotswold Cottage and Tudor Revival, again, and followed a side path to "Tudorbethan" (see link, below) and came up with this quote:

"Tudorbethan is not popular with modernist architects and is frequently reviled as pastiche or indeed non-architecture." Wow! Kinda harsh.

I know that pastiche can be an architectural dirty word. It is a very fine line between charming and cringe-worthy, quirky and clownish. Upon seeing the architect's watercolor, we had a very favorable gut reaction, so we decided to proceed along those lines. Now, in the words of the immortal Tim Gunn, we have to "Make it work" with respect to materials and any refinements.

Thanks for the response, I will address other responses in another message - Jo Ann

Here is a link that might be useful: Tudorbethan

@ worthy - I meant to say Olmstead which is the link you gave me. Roxborough, another LC design, was on my brain because I was looking at a photo of the back for the half-timbering.

@ artielang - That is a great photo. It would probably suit me better to do brick & stone and lose the half-timbering, but DH really, really loves h-t and would probably do it in curves & angles, if he could. LOL!

@ dixiedoodle - Yup, I'm way concerned about plain stucco next to the half-timbered stucco which is why I'm thinking the "plain" areas should be Pastelcote brick or tumbled brick with overgrout or mortar wash. Architect is talking to DH about using shakes, there. I think I put my foot down at that point.

@ allison0704 - When searching for "stucco" on the forum, I came across your mortar washed brick pictures as an alternative. Absolutely swoon-worthy, so we added that into the possibilities. I had been to the Jack Arnold site, previously, but it was good to take a second look.

@ lsst - we live in Houston, but are building in TR to retire to. We don't have a builder, yet. Our architect works for a builder who builds in the Cliffs, so we have seen some of his houses up there. The Cliffs are a bit above our price point, but we think we will be able to get something really nice on our lot in TR. We are trying to get the plans & elevations with preliminary materials selections in reasonable order to we can send them out to builders and get ROM quotes. If you have a builder or builders you like, we would love to have some references.

@ chisue - I think we are in the realm of "agree to disagree", but I appreciate your input on the complicated rooflines. I don't think we would ever need to expand upward and if a future buyer wanted more than a potential 5000 sf between the main floor and the walkout basement, I think they would need a different house than this one. BTW - wouldn't the steep pitch + gables + raising a portion of the roof actually give us more usable area under the roof than just a straightforward hip roof?

Thanks, so much, for all of the comments. I really appreciate the input - Jo Ann

Frankly,(no pun intended) there is nothing about this design that looks French to me. I would consider a hipped/truncated gable end to be a predominantly Germanic element. German rural architecture never quite took root in America or France or England. Perhaps it could be considered Belgian Tudor. The easiest way to make it convincingly French would be to delete some gables and add a tower and eave flares.

Here is a link that might be useful: Antique Home site

@ mightyanvil - Tres drôle. Enjoyed the pun ;^>

Tower? Did you say "Tower"? Just wait until you see the rear elevation!!!! I know the tower should really be on the front, but the floor plan has two bumps outs on the back that become "tower-ish" when extended down to the basement level. The forum will become unhinged if I ever get up the courage to post the rear elevation. LOL!

I think you will have made my DH's day if the clipped gables are a Germanic element. He searched all over the web to try to figure out what a German cottage style might be, drooling over pictures of Rothenburg along the way. Well, in the end, does it really matter? This is just an American romantization of a collage of European components. We can make up whatever name we choose, nicht wahr?

OK, I'm over my giddiness ... mightyanvil, does it work as a reasonable pastiche? We fell in love with the original watercolor, but are we so blinded by the emotional reaction to it that we will execute something with serious esthetic issues?

Thanks, so much, for the attention that you & all y'all are giving to my questions - Jo Ann

Ok, we all have our personal likes and dislikes about residential architecture so here's mine: The German truncated gable is one of my least favorite elements but I was born before Pearl Harbor.

What I dislike most about today's neo-traditional/romantic designs is the seemingly random layering of gable elements apparently for the sake of adding complexity rather than style to a facade.

Use of too many materials would be next. In my opinion, if you want to use more than two gables or two materials you need considerably more design skill than the average homeowner, home designer, or architect.

The biggest and most common mistake made in residential design is to think it's easy. The more you know about the design of buildings the harder it is to create a good one. Start simple and work toward the complex. Learn how to do it on other people's houses or hire someone who has already designed a lot of good ones. You can't afford to mess it up.

I don't think this house design thing is easy, at all, and I do "rocket science" on a daily basis. Before we even approached an architect, we talked through what we considered the "functional requirements" for the kind of house we wanted. I even produced a Powerpoint pitch to give to the architect which, in my jargon, would be called a Concept of Operations. We poured through books and websites and had folders of pictures and links to websites to give to the architect.

We've done all this and have a floor plan and elevations that I'm trying to do a sanity check on to make we didn't go down a rabbit hole in the process. We've read the book "What Not to Build", so I'm very nervous about violating the "Rule of Five" with respect to too many materials. Maybe my gut is telling me that I have to do some editing on all of this. But, this is a 3 person process - me, DH & architect - so I have quite a bit of human element in this, as well.

Anyway, I took what was written to heart and used the design software I have to do two front elevations with no gables whatsoever. The first one is just what it takes to put a hip roof over the mass of this house given what the floor plan currently is. In the second one, I simplified even further to push the front entrance into the same plane as the primary wall (one with French doors) of the front and removed a slight bump out from the left hand side where the garage is.

Should my thinking now be to build up from these simplified elevations? Perhaps, just add one gable to emphasize the front door? The primary "inspiration" picture that we gave to the architect (see Worthy's link, above)does not have any layered gables and we asked him to make our elevation toned down from that.

Thanks for the inputs - Jo Ann

P.S. DH was born before Pearl Harbor, too. (I'm a "duck & cover" kid.)

Apologies for the fact that I am not as adept as I might be with the design software, but we planned to only use it for prototyping so that we had something to talk to when we discussed issues with our architect.

Anyway, I took the basic hip roof that covered the mass of the house and added a gable centered on the French doors to the dining room. I did violate mightyanvil's precepts and layered a gable within that to delineate the entryway. One of the no-no's in the "What Not to Build" book is to have a design which makes it confusing as to where the door actually is. I'll try to figure out something better, later, but here is what I came up with:

Is this a move in the right direction? Where should I go from here? This is primarily so I can show something to DH to see if there is any hope of simplifying things.

I think one of my problems is that I'm trying to do my best, but just don't know, as a layperson, how to figure out what is good design so that I can communicate with our architect. I've taken book after book out of the library and bought a ton more. I've been looking at websites and trying to read up on various architectures since January. What are other resources and avenues of attack that a non-designer should pursue?

Again, thanks for everyone's patience & inputs - Jo Ann

Just quickly -- Now you are "All hat and no cattle". Too much roof...way too much roof.

Quickly back - Part of the problem is that I was generating soffits with the software & I don't know what I am doing with them. So, another try without soffits, pitch lowered to 10:12 (to reduce roof to mass of the house ratio) and gable-free.

My understanding is that one of the things a front gable does is to cut into the roof with wall, as it were, so that the roof doesn't look as massive. I'll play around a little more with that for the area above the French doors. I guess dormers are an option, but I haven't figured out how to do that, yet.

Thanks - Jo Ann

The 10/12 helps. Still a lot of roof. Dormers that serve no interior rooms seem odd (to me); once a poster referred to that as 'putting dog houses on a roof'.

From the insights posted on this thread and others in the forum, we've realized that what the architect gave us is more like "tricked-out" neo-traditional than any kind of "European" style. We've gone back to the drawing board & have found some interesting things. I will start a new thread in the morning to share some links & see if folks think these more representative of a European style. Until then, just for fun, search on "half timbered" at the following site to see architecture from all over the continent. ;^)

Here is a link that might be useful: Half-timbered Buildings

A restored farm building near Honfleur France now part of a hotel.

Here is a link that might be useful: French house designer

Ran across this while googling something else. Seems to look nothing like what you ended up with (or am I wrong). I though you have a gambrel roof and something makes me think you are using shingles :) Funny how things change when we are working on a house!