Yes, it's 3 years old but more importantly, the reason there's "such a huge, yet apparently unusable roof gable on the front of the house?" is because it's flippin' gorgeous! JMHO but seems a lot of people agree with me - Dutty's house has been saved many times.

sweet holly, thank you. aliris...you are very kind. I wouldn't know how to make a restaurant a success with my talents...such as they are. After working in my son's restaurant for 5 years I have to tell you ...I am way too lazy to work that hard :) I had no idea you are so familiar with the San Jacinto area. He just loves CA and says he will never live anywhere else again. He spent 6 days in early Sept up in Sequoia Natl park. He was in the wilderness for the whole time. Even set up the tent inside a hollowed out dead Sequoia !! There was plenty of room. He swam in the lakes up there and had a wonderful time. If he can keep things on an even keel I think he has the makings of a naturalist...his degree is in microbiology, so he has plenty of background. We'll see. Tea4all...I too am so glad you have joined the fun here on Kitchens. There are SO many special folks here. We have a bond that starts with the kitchen and then moves on to some great friendships. A number of us have gotten together over the years in real life too. It is a special place. I am glad you like my ramblings . A book is most likely not in the picture...it would have to be a set of paragraphs...vignettes of my life...who knows...maybe someday. The mentioning of a coops and Aliris saying how much she misses it reminded me of my kids and how they were when we had the coop. It met in my garage. I did it for 8 years. We had a small truck that came out of Atlanta. Later they sold out and it came from Gainesville FL. We had an 18 wheeler that was refrigerated and they backed up in the driveway. Designated folks met the truck and unloaded. We had a fridge in the garage. All through the day folks came and subdivided the food according to the paper order forms that were turned in. This was the early 80's-mid 80's. My kids loved it when they got home from school and saw all the "goodies". Also playing with the kids of the families that belonged to the coop. At one point we had probably 75 or so families. We got peanut butter in 30 # buckets...had to be stirred ! Whew...we also got cashews in huge 30# sealed cans. Honey in 60# cans. All out flour came in 25 and 50 # bags. We got raisins and dates in 35 # boxes. Cheese all came in large blocks. Either 5# for some or the 30# wheels. We had special cheese knives with 2 handles to cut the cheese. I have an order sheet from that time period with the prices...sure wish we could get the almonds for that now LOL. Anyway my kids hated unsalted peanut butter and carob !! They would beg for " real" food LOL. Depending on what I made them they would swap lunches at school, I didn't know this at the time , with kids that didn't want "store bought" food and my kids thought it was an illegal treat to have store bought. They still laugh about the peanut butter and carob. Fortunately that was the only 2 things they disliked. We were lucky. No picky eaters at our house. Nice memories indeed. And more to be made....what a sweet thing to be able to open this thread time after time and still have such nice surprises...words as well as a new friend. c

I agree with many of these comments. Your house is charming as it is! We just sold a ranch home that I wanted desperately to add a larger front porch and/or more interesting roof line to. In the end, we didn't. And wouldn't you know maintaining the structural and aesthetic integrity of what our home originally was (even if that wasn't on trend) is what brought us a cash buyer in 3 days at over asking price. I do think that option 1 from the architect is a nice look though.

With a house design a simple and dominated by two features (the gable and the garage) like this, the features that are there really need to be well proportioned and high quality. RES is getting at that above. Two individual double hung windows with thicker trim around and in between them is going to look much more high quality than the single unit with no trim shown right now. I would also second adding muntin bars to the windows (grids) similar to the rendering for some additional interest. I think the shingles in the gable ends are fine, provided that they aren't those super textured "rustic" vinyl shakes that just look fake. Keep them simple and classic. I also like that they are used in all 4 gables to tie the house together so that it doesn't look like all of the effort was put into the front and the other 3 sides are just leftover. If you were looking for an alternate, yu might use board and batten. I would treat the smaller gable over the front door the exact same way that the big gable is treated for more design cohesion. Including the full gable cornice return to match the garage (instead of the porkchops). This is a house where the design of the garage doors and door design are going to be extremely important. This is not the time to do a flush garage door painted to match the house. It will look like a big blank wall on the first floor. I highly recommend a quality door with a panel pattern and glass lites. The front door and garage should match in style, with some element of the door making it slightly more the focus of attention. This will be a little more challenging since the door is recessed and in shadow, but options include painting the door a bold color or doing a stained wood door with the garage painted a more neutral color. Lastly, the porch posts could use to be thickened up a bit more to give them more visual substance. This will also help draw attention to the front door. I would take a look through photos of arts and crafts and shingle style carriage houses for inspiration, as that is the sort of vibe that your house is giving off, and you can do nothing but improve the look by embracing that idea.