Identify how you want to use the yard. Some examples for a front yard include: somewhere to put stuff you are loading/unloading from car, a meet-and-greet, a place for the kids to bounce balls while you can see them/are washing the car. A place to watch your plants growing. I'd caution you against rebelling against grass for the sake of rebelling against grass. Think of it as negative, open space that happens to be green, and you can always change it in your head to decking or paving/flagstone. The beauty of being a homeowner/DIYer is that you don't always need to have the master plan finished in your head in order to get started. You sound sure of a number of things. Do those. Or at least draw them out. Sometimes step two is more clear from after step one. Experienced people have implemented enough plans to be able to see step 7 from before step 1, but DIYers may need to take it one step at a time. One way to design is to mock up in person. Say, you want to do a low barrier and a courtyard. OK. Put a row or garbage cans where you think the hedge could be, and drag some chairs into the area and sit there. How does it feel? What's missing? Should the hedge move? Do you need shade? Etc. You might have analysis paralysis too. Taking the first step, even if you just go out and plant a tree where you want some shade, can help get you past that too. You can always move it for a year or two if you got the placement wrong. KarinL

Hi Swampee. Whether or not you can recast a 1950s ranch into an Arts & Crafts mode despends mostly on the aesthetic quality of the house itself. An informal, semi-rustic 1950s ranch, with spacious rooms & wide openings between them; with tall gables over tall, vertically divided windows; with a dark-toned hipped or gabled roof with deeply cantilevered eaves; with broad accent walls & heavy piers of rubble stone rock or tapestry brick; and with rough-sawn wooden siding might make a perfect background for Craftsman-style pieces, just as it is, and for a simple reason: both the earlier furniture & the later house spring from similar aesthetic impulses & both therefore have a similar respect for the subtle beauty of natural colors & materials. The Gamble House in Pasadena, despite its early date, is nothing so much as a well-executed 195Os ranch blown up to giant size. If, on the other hand, your house is the kind of 195Os house my friends all had when I was growing up--with small rooms, narrow hallways & hollow-core doors; with short double-hung windows surrounded by skimpy trim, with pink-&-black plastic tile in the baths; with turquoise counters & appliances in the kitchen; with gigantic plate-glass picture windows flanked by teensy wooden shutters; with a pale gray asphalt tile roof & only a band of one or two courses of gray cinderblocks to separate the expanse of wide-lap pastel siding from a wide swatch of crewcut crabgrass--then trying to create the expansive aura of an earlier period will be a harder--but not impossible--task, and here's a paragraph from Edith Wharton's The Decoration of Houses, that--despite the fact that it was written in 1897, and that it's talking about rooms, and that it's talking about a completely different style than the one we're discussing here, besides--explains why: "[T]he esence of a style lies not in its use of ornament but in its handling of proportion. Structure conditions ornament, not ornament structure. In other words, decoration is always subservient to proportion, and a room, whatever its decoration may be, must represent the style to which its proportions belong. The less cannot include the greater. Unfortunately, it is usually by ornamental details, rather than by proportion, that people distinguish one style from another. To many persons, garlands, bow-knots, quivers & a great deal of gilding represent the Louis XVI style. [A]n architect familiar with the subject knows that a Louis XVI room may may exist without any of these, and he often deprecates these as representing the cheaper & more trivial effects of the period, and those that have most helped vulgarize it. In fact, in nine cases out of ten, his use of them is a concession to the client, who having asked for Louis XVI room, would would not know he had got it were these details left out." In other words, you can't just stick leaded glass doors, copper lanterns & Craftsman-style wooden brackets onto a typical 195Os tract house, Mr. Potato Head-style, and expect to get a good-looking result. It doesn't work that way. But that doesn't mean you're stuck with aqua siding & white wrought-iron porch railings, either. It's just a matter of using the right colors & finishes & planting materials, materials that are compatible with both the actual period of the house itself and the also with the feel of the earlier period, rather than trying to gussy-up your house with inauthentic details that are incompatible with the structure--the proportions--of your house and that have a sstuck-on look. How about posting some photos so we can see what you have to work with? Regards, MAGNAVERDE

GGG, You are right, I'll check one of the book stores to look at the latest mag. It is amazing how much we all are doing to our small houses. And really appreciate the ongoing wirtings/pics from all. SDtriplits....jeesh, you are doing all of this with 3 babes walking around? I'm having enough trouble getting things done on my own. Find trying to complete something requires something else which becomes a revolving door going to HD and I'm not even changing walls, etc. Having 1700 feet when you are finished will be wonderful. As for being embarrassed, me too at this point. Haven't posted any pics yet because of the "in-between" stages. Will get there with some before/afters. My front opens into what was being used as a dining room, open to living room. Using the entire space as a living area. The kitchen too is rather large for such a small home, but was remodeled before I bought, there were other ways it could have been done for better flow but better judgement says to work with what has been done. Your house sounds like it is laid out like a ranch, but think the design is a bit more than such, although same era and probably looks a lot like mine interiro wise. My creativity isnt' as good as it should be and making me a bit irritated when things don't work out as envisioned. Or I have gotten myself into more than planned. Am very visual so all the things that need to be done are tough for me to ignore.....need patience on this one. Still, it sure helps to know what others have done and are doing to keep me on track and see ideas. Sandy

I tried adding some landscaping type touches... and the seating. I know the plants would likely be less vivid in that shady spot - though perhaps some chocolate chip ajuga would provide seasonal color like the lavender shown. The yellow is a spice bush, which can tolerate shade. I know the fence is crazy looking - I just grabbed something quick online to give the impression... There are no sidewalks on my street, but a little fence adds a lot of cottage cute-factor, to me.