hmm. sump pump in the basement implies a certain amount of dampness inherent in the house to me... and if the closet doors are kept closed, you get the combination of damp and stagnant... perfect place for icks to grow. check the gutters and make sure that they're not doing something evil like draining half the runoff into the eaves and down the exterior wall (very evil, like call the insurance company kind of evil) if that's not causing the dampness, and there's no sign of an actual leaking pipe in the wall (actual condensation or staining of the drywall or the ceiling below) then you might just have damp air... slick surfaces like shoes show mildew and mold first, but eventually, it will get into other things, and that's not good. the simplest answer in a small space is a bucket of 'damp rid'... I actually keep one in my husband's car, since he can literally fog the windows up just sitting there waiting for me to get out of the market! and making sure that the closet doors get opened on a regular basis.

Paint is a wonderful thing. We had a similar situation but had to get the water away from the house. (We live in the south and I don't want to do anything that will possibly attract termites.) So I painted the downspout the same color as the pillar. No one ever even noticed it after that. Where it joined the bricked area along the foundation, I painted that section of downspout a brown color so it would "fade" into the brick. Now one noticed it after that. Then I joined a round pvc pipe to the where the water came out because I wanted that water far away from the foundation. Spray painted the pvc pipe brown also and it ended up being covered by pine straw that is in the garden area. Water shoots out onto the driveway and gets carried away. End of problem and the gutters do their job nicely.

You need to lower the height of the soil right next to the house and grade it out properly. I would gather that is 80% of the problem. It rains, then water and dirt splashes on the siding. And I can't tell if those ferns were planted there or if they are naturals, but landscaping should ideally be set back at least three or four feet from the house. And is that a sprinkler head just to the right of the fern in the middle? I'd power sand that siding clean before proceeding too much further once all the grading and landscaping issues were corrected. For two reasons, I hate painting over mess and to make the surface as smooth as possible for ultimate paint job. Have you tried using a 3M scrub pad to get that green off? I cannot imagine why that stuff wouldn't come off much more than it has.

> I'm not seeing the the sawn log wood siding. I am! The setting calls out for it, IMO. But that's entirely a matter of taste, and my opinion is no better than yours, just different. I do agree that this structure looks kind of iffy. If it were only 2 storeys, maybe there'd be less hazard (though not zero) of, and in, a collapse. For better and worse, we live in a nation (increasingly a world) intolerant of risk and accidents. I would have LOVED to have had that play house when I was a kid! But it's all different now. If an accident should happen to your kids while they were playing on it, you could end up in a world of legal trouble, your kids whisked away from you by the local child protection agency. And good grief, can you imagine what it would be like if they had friends with them? The neighbors' lawsuits could ruin you. Worse still, if someone were seriously injured, permanently disabled, or killed, think of how you'd feel. Sorry to be one of the worriers here. And I mean that literally -- I'm sorry that it's come to this. Parents now drive their cars to the end of their driveways to pick up their kids as the school bus lets them off. They're not allowed to walk up the driveway. Something might happen. The mind boggles. But that's where we are now. So, I agree, definitely have someone knowledgeable look that gorgeous play house over.