Hi there -

I am really not sure where to post this; hopefully I've found the right spot. (I used to be on GardenWeb.)

Below you'll see my house. What's not completely obvious from the pic is that the brick has a lot of differently coloured mortar, some of it the result of staining, some the result of patch jobs. You'll also see that the top of the chimney was re-done in a not-quite-matching brick. Also, this particular grey reminds me of prison.

All this to say that the grey brick is a problem.

So I thought I could either paint it out, or maybe clad it in Hardie siding. For the chimney, I was thinking of painting it, or putting faux-stone over the chimney brick.

What do you think?

At the bottom of this post, I've provided a really rough mock-up of my house with some grey-green shakes on the bottom, lapboard on top, and stone for the chimney. Would something like this be too much? Maybe just paint?

That is just one idea. I'm open to any colours that are not too loud. The street has large maple trees which block a lot of the sun. It is very leafy, so that's why I thought that cottagey colours would work well.

Thank you

Existing house:

Mock up: