I know what you mean about wanting something, but I don't think that's it. That is too Gingerbread for the style of your house. You need something more in keeping with the period & style. Is the porch roof there now or did you photoshop that?

I think shutters and landscaping would help a lot.

It's there now. Here's the house currently:

This is originally what I had in mind:

No shutters. The window placement is too asymmetrical. Before, with shutters, they just emphasized the off-kilter look. Horrible. The point is to make the windows recede & make the door the focal point.

Sorry, I don't like the gable decoration at all. I agree that it's too gingerbread, and detracts more from the overall simple style of your house than enhances it.

I also think that if you painted your door -- maybe something like a warm, welcoming red to tie in with your roof -- that would help tremendously. As it is, the door itself is kinda getting lost in the expanse of white.

How about if you do a mock up with those columns beefed up ? I love the look of the brackets you wanted and think you can carry that simple yet interesting idea into the columns. What makes those brackets appealing (to me and I'm guessing to you, too) is the sense of mass and presence, a bit of detail but nothing foofy and the wonderful shadow lines from the graduated molding and button detail. Shadow lines on a house draw me in every time and it's a largely misunderstood and little used (unless you have an architect with a good eye) design element.

I agree - no shutters. What are the plans for the porch area - will there be a railing of some kind? I don't think it's going to take much to finish and get the look you're after and make the entry a focal point. Think mass and shadow.

oh thank you, dlm2000. You nailed the concept: mass, presence & shadow line. Texture too. No foofiness! But I thought a bit of foof on the gable wouldn't be too bad. I saw a house in a magazine recently that had just a smidgen of gingerbread on the porch (miniscule brackets on the porch columns) and was surprised how good it looked. It added just enough curve to a rectilinear design.

Those brackets -- sigh. They'd be perfect. I'll talk to the contractor again. Maybe we can get them to work.

Originally I wanted a simple wrought iron railing for the stone steps & porch. Not sure what to do now that columns might be in the way.

Did as dlm2000 suggested -- here's a mock-up with square, beefed up columns. It's not too bad, don't you think? Perhaps the skinny pediment should have thinner columns?

I like the beefed up columns. How about more of those along the porch or columns and balustrades and railing on the porch? I also agreewith another poster that the door would be attractive in a contrasting color. I can't tell too much about the light under the pediment, but a lantern type in black would be nice.

That looks great! I'd also beef up front of the pediment. Then do lights on either side of your door since a hanging fixture would be blocked- plus they'd look nice. I think just having the 2 colums would keep the focus on the door.

How about the beefer front columns and matching columns on either side of the front door, or split columns there.

Yes, kitchenwitch, that's exactly what the entrance needs. I just spent the whole morning flipping through magazines & books, and the pictures I tagged have just that combo.

And thanks too to cat_tail for the idea of beefing up the pediment. It sure does need some more molding. Found some pictures to show my contractor.

I'll consider painting the front door, though I really love the white door w/ white farm house look. It's fairly common up here in the northeast and looks wonderful in the green of summer. The door use to get a brutal amount of sun & heat. In fact, the old dark wood door cracked from heat absorption. Maybe the new pediment fixes some of that. But if not, then a dark color would be impractical. Maybe a different white would be subtle and pretty. There are some historic houses here, white house, white door, white shutters, but the shades of white are different. Really great look.

Frankly, I think the whole door trim needs a redo, now that you all have brought up these good ideas: shadow lines, molding, visual heft.

You can see it's just not right:

The lighting is a barn light (great soft lighting!) and two eyeballs to cast light on the house & address numbers. It's a softer light at night that eliminates harsh glare. I hate coming up to a door at night, squinting from the lights being right in my face. I'm wrinkly enough without squinting! And the light set-up makes the house pretty at night.

Thanks, everybody, for helping me think this through.

I think a gable pediment would work if it were more geometric, to complement the strong lines of your facade.

What about something like this?

{{!gwi}}

awm how deep is that porch area front to back? It looks about 4' to me from the picture angle but it's hard to tell. You want to be able to walk out your front door, turn right and walk onto your porch area, correct? You don't need that entire porch depth in order to do that.

See if you can picture this; if you step that square column back, you can use a smaller version of the bracket that you love that begins at the leading edge of the gable and angles back to the column. The brackets then become the prominent decorative detail and the posts/column are scaled back and non decorative save for molding top and bottom. You can put decorative planters on the porch floor, under the brackets and in front of the columns for color - picture red geraniums!

Painting the front door is an option but I'd hold off on that and see if you think it's needed till after you get the design details done on the porch area. Personally I like the hanging fixture you have there more than the idea of carriage lights flanking the door - it's appropriate to have a hanging fixture with that type of entry gable (says one who has that exact type of entry ;-)) and carriage lights would always be fighting with the colums for attention.

You say you'd like a bit of curve with the rectilinear lines and those brackets are perfect - just enough and not too much. Can you tell I'm pushing you to use them??!!

Yes, something not so lacey is probably right. But doesn't that one look too Arts & Crafts? I'll have to play with it in Windows Paint (a very useful applet, btw. It's Photoshop Lite).

"See if you can picture this; if you step that square column back, you can use a smaller version of the bracket that you love that begins at the leading edge of the gable and angles back to the column. The brackets then become the prominent decorative detail and the posts/column are scaled back and non decorative save for molding top and bottom. You can put decorative planters on the porch floor, under the brackets and in front of the columns for color - picture red geraniums!"

dlm, you are a genius. What a great, great idea. I think you've just saved the whole endeavor.

Really, I'm reeling from your idea. You don't know how much thought I've put into this sow's ear to silk purse house project, and basically, it was predicated on those brackets & the door design.

Thank you so very much.

dlm, the porch is at least 6 feet deep. Funny, but something that was bothering me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it until you brought up the idea, was the columns being right on the edge of the porch. So now if we set them back a foot or so, we can have the brackets, & the columns won't seem like they're falling off the edge of the porch. I can see a pretty way to work the railing in too, if we ever get around to putting one in to meet code. (Right now we're enjoying the unobstructed view too much.)

Wow, dlm!

I think you need a railing all around your porch.. It almost looks unfinished.. and I think a nice railing would soften the look of the house and you could plant some nice bushes.and maybe some nice rocking chairs and such on the porch.. of course this is just my opinion..

It's all about having another set of eyes to look at things for you - our brains get locked into what we 'think' we know but someone else doesn't have those preconceptions. I *so* hope those brackets work for you - I really love that look! With 6' + you have plenty of room to work with the brackets and columns and still have a gracious turning radius from the door

BTW - I think the reason the columns looked like they would fall off the edge to you is because your steps are set in from the gable width and where the columns would stand. It's just a visual effect because of the way it's stepped in from the sides.

Well, I found a picture of something that might work (I'll still link it below) but as I continued to read and saw DLM's idea, I just thought, "Well, that's it!" Brilliant!

Now, I think I'd better ask DLM to look at my wonky front porch, too! :-) Another column? Benches? Lights? waaahhh...

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

Oooh, I want that house :)

dlm needs her own website to help people like us. She has a great eye.

I can see combining dlm's stepped back columns, your brackets and very simple fretwork a la amysrq's modern farmhouse picture. Check with your carpenter, but you may need to transfer the weight by running a support beam the entire 6' width of the porch before adding your brackets and then setting the square columns behind your brackets. If you don't want fretwork under the pediment, slightly recessed simple, large dentil trim underneath will also give it a handsome, finished look.

I'd also add a matching framed window to the right of the small window above the pediment. Since there's a likely reason why you didn't place an operable window there for symmetry, just add a thinly trimmed non-operable one to the facade and darken from behind. Or, if the operable window is in a bath, you can replicate old seeded glass in the real window and the faux one, but you'll still need to darken behind the faux window so the clapboard doesn't show.

If you don't want to add railing, large rectangular planters on raised feet framing out the porch may give it a more finished look. If you go with that idea, repeat the simple frets or dentil from the pediment on the front of the planters. If you find a glider, swing or a couple of rockers that you like, your home will have a very welcoming, comfortable look.

It will be lovely.

Had another thought and came back here to snag the last picture you posted of the entry - the large one - and it's gone! Not sure who that cutie is in the blue shorts - is he yours? And is that you, awm? Whad'ja do, switch your pics around at Photobucket or something ??!!

If you can put that pic back in, I have another possibility but need to see the entry straight on again.

amy that is one gorgeous (and huge!) house, but the setting is what grabs me - oh to have a view!!! I think that kind of gable detail looks best with a wider span from a broad gable. With a gable like awm's it might lose something in the proportions.

The support beams are already in place just as you described.

We couldn't add a matching window or move the existing window because a shower is in that space now. The other upstairs windows couldn't be moved because they'd end up in closets. Plus there's the whole extra costs of building new window headers one you start moving them around or widening them. Not cheap. We did splurge on a new header for the wider window in the dining room. All the other windows are the original widths (and headers), just longer on the bottoms.

Many houses either have windows that are centered in the rooms but are asymmetrically placed outside (like ours); or they're symmetrically placed outside but off center in the rooms.

The railing! Yes, we must add one to meet code. But I didn't want a white picket one because then you throw off the balance again. They really dominate a facade. Besides, we didn't want to block the view from the dining room too much. So to keep the focus on the door & pediment (which took me weeks to think of to solve the visual balance problem!), we'll eventually get a simple black wrought iron railing, which recedes somewhat visually when looking at the house and from the DR window. For now we love having the unobstructed view from the DR window. I'll probably add planters of annuals on the porch this summer just for some color.

Can you still not see the picture dlm? Sometimes Pbase's direct linking doesn't work well. The pic of the little guy in blue shorts is in (or should be in) the Painted Brick thread. It's a 21 year old picture :)

Am I the only one seeing that picture? The one of your porch, close up, is gone and there's a very large pic of the little guy instead - in the post where you say,

"Frankly, I think the whole door trim needs a redo, now that you all have brought up these good ideas: shadow lines, molding, visual heft.

You can see it's just not right: " and right after that is the little boy pic - kind of a non-sequitur!

In fact the picture is so large it's making the page scroll and I have a BIG monitor!

How odd! I see the front porch. What on earth is happening, I wonder?

Just went to my photo hosting site, and somehow the pictures DID get switched! Haven't the foggiest how that happened. Or why I'm still seeing the correct pictures in gardenweb. Let me try to fix it.

Very puzzling. Hope my photo site wasn't hacked. Here's the porch again:

Oh, I meant to say before....I love love the barn light! Very nice, outside the box choice. :-)

Thanks, amysrq. There are two matching sconces in the back for the deck. I thought they were so cute :)

Here is a link that might be useful: sconce version

Well at least I'm not totally nuts if they got switched!

I'm heading to the gym and hoping to get some yard work in now that our 40 days and nights of rain has stopped for about 48 hours :( I have some thoughts about your entry (maybe you don't want to hear them!) but let me study it a bit more and I'll try and get back here this afternoon.

Of course I want to hear them, LOL! Thanks for your efforts, dlm. Very much appreciated. Hope you had a good work out.

Ok - you're probably not going to appreciate this and I'm breaking a ardinal rule around here by addressing something 'other' than what you were originally asking about! I'll throw this stuff out and you can do with it whatever you wish. Part of my hesitation is I've had things pointed out to me or questioned in my home - things I never noticed but once the comment was made it became the *only* thing I could see! When it's things that can't be changed it can be very frustrating. Enough dancing around with disclaimers.....

A -

One goal of an entry roof is to shelter the door both literally and psychologically. Because you have a double door front entry the overhang of the roof doesn't give that full sense of shelter - it doesn't extend out far enough from the door. The roof pitch on that gable appears to be steeper than the rest of your house but I can't tell for sure. If the roof pitch was shallower, the gable could extend our further - maybe. Or possibly there's a way to extend it as is and still have the height you'd need to walk under that extension. I know roof tie in would be a b*tch though.

B -

See the triangular areas in your picture, (not the one I doctored) above the horizontal pieces on the gable return? There's a name for that which escapes me at the moment, but it's meant to be filled in on a 'formal' entry like you have. As is, to my eye, they look cut off and unfinished, almost as if that 'beam' extended all the way across at one time and was cut off.If it had extended all the way across it would be like the gable detail in amy's pic but I still don't think that's appropriate for your house and besides it would block your fixture.

C -

The 2 trim boards forming the triangle above the door are out of scale to the other trim boards below them. You have what looks to be double 2 x 6 stacked over the door and then the upper pieces are 2 x 4 (?). I know you're not done trimming this out and painting and you may already have plans to beef that up, if so ignore me. It would be nice to see more width to the trim on the sides of the door also. I know they could not extend to full door height so would need to have more the look of half columns (half vertically not horizontally) supporting the roof at that point. They would have the same cornice and base trim that you would use on the full columns and would stich out a bit further than the door trim. Clear as mud?

{{!gwi}}

OTOH...... Ignore absolutely everything I just wrote, and find a way to do columns with those beautiful brackets of yours!

Deb.... slinking off in case you're throwing things at me.....

Oh Deb, not throwing things at all! Thanks so much for taking the time to critique the door.

Actually, I dislike the area above the door very much -- the idea of using wider trim makes sense. I completely agree about adding pilasters to the side of the door. They'd work: at least they'd look like they're holding up the beams. Columns, pilasters, & brackets should always look like they're holding something up even if they're not.

I'm not sure about extending the roof line, though. Not sure if we could/should do that at this point. The pediment's pretty big, actually. The picture must not convey that well. As far as filling in the corners, frankly, I think it looks okay as it is. It's a common design. Here's something similar:

While biking today, I noticed a lot of door/pediment treatments that can be copied. I'll ride again tomorrow and bring a camera this time. I'd have to show a picture to my contractor. The problem with the contractor & his workers (and me, in all fairness), is that no one is trained in architecture, and in order to do classical architecture well, you need to know the rules of proportion & the orders. You can't really just build a white triangle & add columns. So all of us are muddling through here.

While riding I saw two examples of set back pillars with brackets in front of them!

Thanks again for helping me with this design dilemma. I owe you!