Virgil Carter Fine Art - thank you, and yes! I need that arbor or trellis over the garage doors. I'm adding that to my list. Naf_Naf - thank you! I think I do like a richer tone like what you linked to. That house overall is beautiful. The only thing I didn't love about it was that there are many different colors of wood--rich red outside, light colored wood floors, etc. That being said, if I had the shower from that house, I'd probably be so happy I wouldn't notice the different wood stains.

@BT Great question and not to hijack this thread but since you asked: The hip roof has long span trusses and girders. My entire design was a slight overkill since we are also in a siesmic region. I wanted vast open span living and garage spaces with no posts or visible supports. Even though I subsequently enlisted a top local engineering company for their final design and stamp, I upgraded foundation and roofing members. The same design went into our 55' long and deep garages, creating a sense of open and free space. The foundation was another piece of engineering where I chose a post and pier foundation in the 5' high crawl space, and boy is it solid; it contributes to an extremely solid floor, on slab like foundation feel in the entire home.

if you did metal roof over the porch, it would look great. change out the porch posts to something wider (either white or cedar), change out the porch spindles to something more modern. maybe paint the porch steps. paint the door. remove the shutters and either do black windows, OR do trim around the window and paint it black. get a diff garage door w/carriage hardware. Board and batten is an option. All of these pictures show the upgrades I've mentioned here's the metal roof just over the porch area w/the larger cedar posts. this one too. but white posts. farmhouse style lighting garage door, lights over the door, black windows this one is all white, but notice the black windows and black railing oh, and the garage doors all have the iron carriage hardware board/batten. black windows. wood arbor Black trim around the windows. white shingles. love this for the porch steps if you removed the lattice and replaced w/something like this, and painted the porch and steps a darker color, w/a color front door, you'd get this look

Thank you for the feedback. This is a rebuild. The reason the house looks as it does is that we asked the architect to give it more presence/mass. We are replacing a rancher with what felt like another rancher, and felt underwhelmed. Here is a rendering. The siding and the stucco are the same beige (since white is not allowed), and the stone picks up the beige with some grays and darker browns. Those pillars make me see giraffe legs!