birdie234 You said, "The current plan allows for the old house — which is essentially a knock–down — to eventually be demolished, leaving a new five bedroom house on the lot." What will support the right side of the new house when you tear down the old house? It seems like a ticklish job to reinforce the old structure to support the overlap of the new house. Will you have to support the new house while a new foundation is constructed or will you demolish part of the new house and then build it back? Will you build a new foundation inside the old house? I would expect a wall section of that construction and a written construction sequence from your designer before trying to design the facade. You also said, "The second floor is attached because we are using the space between the dormer and the new house." That doesn't require the houses to overlap; the houses could share a foundation and the old dormer could be extended to meet the new house. The overlap makes no sense unless there is a zoning restriction. If the side yard setbacks don't limits the width of the house, you should pull the houses apart and save yourself a lot of headaches as well as improve the appearance of the house.. You have asked if the left gable could be eliminated. That might make sense but not if you intend to eventually tear down the old house. Your designer should be designing two projects: one with two attached houses and one with just the new house. Or do you intend to build a new wing in place of the old house? But first find out if the width of the houses can be increased. Whether it does or not, you have a tough design task ahead of you.

@Windows on Washington Ltd and @quasiexpert Sorry if my last message came through in a different tone, I'd been up for awhile and was just stream of consciousness posting. From my research here on this forum, it just seems that invariably quite a few posts discount the entry level windows and recommend the Anderson 400 or Marvin Integrity ++ type windows. Hoping that I can learn from you all. Our situation is a new construction in the deep South (Birmingham AL). About 60 windows on the house. Front facing windows I believe have to be aluminum clad, the rear might be able to get way with a vinyl window. Rear will be facing the South West, but looks like there will be some tree coverage as well as decks/roofing for the majority of the windows. The builder has spec'd Piva Group vinyl windows. They are Argon filled, double glazed, Low E 366. U-factor 0.26, SHGC 0.21, Visible Transmittance 0.49 and air leakage < 0.3. He mentioned that the Anderson 100's might be within the same price range, and we would be interested in the Smart Sun if it's available with the low E4 coating to help protect the wood floors. While I can appreciate the beauty of the wood interiors, our preference is for something low maintenance and can handle sun without fading. We've never had a double hung window before and a single hung is fine. We open the windows in our current house maybe 8-10 times a year to air the house out, otherwise they stay shut. Sadly, we wash our windows even less times /duck Given the above criteria, might you have some thoughts or recommendations, or are there any additional questions I might answer?

Hi I agree with Lacey's comment above, busy, Can I suggest plantings, like a row of boxwoods against the house, up to about the bottom of the window, on both the garage side and opposite the entry door. Put something smaller in front, taking your sidewalk towards your front door away from the garage face, aiming for your walk to be 6' or more away from the garage. You need something that your guests who park in your drive to guide them to the front door, so you got to provide them a path to take them there. It doesn't have to be straight, curvy get the job done nicely, wider at the throat where they first start on their journey from the drive, funneling down towards a courtyard effect which can start at or near the back of the garage, something transition where they have to go thru to get to your door. An arbour perhaps, or like gateposts........ This courtyard effect doesn't have to start opposite the front door, it can be on an angle or slanted, but it has to be clear that is your destination once you hit the sidewalk/path at the drive. It can be like a mystery tour as your guests cannot see their final destination, aka front door. In essence we have to try to minimize the stark effect of the stone, give the eye someplace else to wander. Can you keep us posted with more photo's as time goes on?

chicagoans...thank you so much! And those pictures are great! I just realized the first picture I uploaded doesn't show the tape marks for the lights on the prow...oi :) The whole reason I posted....but, we have planned two up/down sconce type lights, about half way up, on the narrow vertical logs just to the left/right of the 3 vertical prow logs...so they'll shine up to the prow soffit (that we labored over staining/sealing for days..ha. We also plan for one above the garage door. Labor of love.) And LED sounds like the way to go cause they'll be up so high. Sure hope they last as long as they say they do :) The question I've been pondering is should we do the 'up/down', or just the 'up' lights? Im overly sensitive about not wanting to light it up too much out there..we'll have coach lights on the outsides of the middle two sliding doors on either end of the prow..matching the height of the garage door coach lights (on both sides of the garage door), at least that's the plan for now....wish I could put the sconces on a dimmer, but they're going to be on a timer, so the electrician said a dimmer wouldn't work unless we do a smart switch type thing-and we're all about not going the smart route--lol. Dumb lights, dumb switches...we embrace the dumb & thats how we roll...after my husbands flip phone finally died, not too long ago, he walked into the store and asked for the dumbest smart phone they had, lol. The poor young man who was trying to upsell him on the highest of high tech phones, didn't know what to say.