We also have a plain vanilla ranch built in 1950. It was never MCM nor any style. It was just churned out as a tract home. The basic layout of bedrooms and living space was ok, but we opened the wall between the kitchen and living room, extended and moved the kitchen so the old kitchen is half of the new one and partly as our new main level laundry room. The rest of the kitchen is part of the extension and is adjacent to the new den we added on. Due to budget constraints, we only cathedraled the new extensions' ceilings and the master bedroom ceiling was vaulted as we extended there too. Where we did not raise the ceilings we added in skylights and a 5ft eyebrow window in the front of the house, boxed in like a skylight (and we have a skylight over the den up high). The greater amount of natural light is fabulous and it feels so much more spacious with the openings for the skylights and eyebrow window. We had hated the all low ceilings when we moved in. Our previous house had vaulted and cathedral ceilings over the living spaces and it was hard to adjust to low and flat. I truly think that being able to raise the ceilings and/or use skylights is one of the best features about a ranch. Since the house was built with little style and updated with no style either (unless cheap and ugly are styles, lol), we felt free to create our own vibe. We went for retro modern with a 40s feel. What a modern person would have done prior to MCM is how I'd describe it. It has some deco feel to it but the lines are simple and not ornate. Crown moldings would not have worked, so we have done simpler ones. We chose modest looking but well designed materials. No one would ever think it is fancy or frilly. We wanted clean lines but not sharp edges. It is supposed to feel homey and unassuming. Like a well worn pair of jeans that fit well. We want guests to feel at home. If you come up with your own style mission statement you can check your choices against it. At one point, we fell in love with white marble and wanted that for our counters. Then one day, we figured out it went against all our other choices and was too elegant. We ended up with Corian in their Rain Cloud pattern, which mimics the feel of a white marble, but is not trying to fake anyone out. It has a softness to the look but with all straight lines and an eased edge profile, it looks neat. We ended up with Carrera marble in our master bathroom for the counter and in the faux rug part of our floor. That space is meant to be more grown up and fancy since it is our private space and not designed for the kids. The veins that make it great there would have been too busy for the kitchen. If we had gone for another look, I'd have loved to use the marble as I usually drool when I see it used anywhere. If I ever do a kitchen again, I would want qs oak with white marble or some other medium toned stained wood. The door style would be different as well. We are happy with our vision and how the look has turned out (the gc screwed us on condition, but that will be fixed, someday). It is not plain vanilla any more! Our house looks like no other in our area and I dare say, it is now one of a kind. Hopefully, you find your groove and your end result reflects your style and vision, and makes you smile too ;)

soooo .. if i understand.. you dont really mind the front facade ... its more the sides that are bothering you ... thats where the monotone is.. to your eye ... i guess i dont know why you would not just change the sides??? but boy.. looking at the side .. i have no clue where i would go with those vertical lines .... and that tiny window... yikes ... but i still like the front as it is ... part of your side problem.. could be accomplished with trellises.. and introducing a vertical element to your foundation plantings ... that is part of the problem... the vast unbroken wall ... leading you to one vast unbroken color.. whatever it may be ... and i am still flustered by the vertical rather than horizontal siding.. whats that all about.. lol ... just playing devils advocate.. and adding variables for you to consider.. outside the box you are standing in .. props for hunting the area to scope out other paint schemes... its always nice to see it done wrong... lol ... ken

I live in a place where location trumps just about everything. On top of that, very few houses are individual, they tended to be built as groups, so there are a number of identical or slightly different houses. But people here tend to pay attention to the inside, and the amenities, and not so much what the exterior looks like. Like I said before, since you would be moving into a neighborhood that contained similar houses, I don't think there would be any benefit to spending money to change the essential character of the house. (Like there might be if the mansard was anomaly). It would make sense to make it look like the most pleasant-looking example of whatever it is. You might like it better on the outside if you change it, but it doesn't really benefit its position in the neighborhood. I am not sure that it would necessarily be any more difficult to sell than anything else in the neighborhood--because it fits in the neighborhood as is. Again I will cite robo's example of the house that was converted. I think when you really analyze the outcome, it doesn't look any better than the original. I think there is an initial reaction of "great they got rid of the mansard" but when you really look, I think the new look may actually be even more awkward than the old. It just references something that we are more used to. I've said it before, but I live in a pretty ugly house. There are four slightly different ones. I bought it because the architect understood floorplans and getting light into the interior. I could have a house that looked better on the outside in the same neighborhood, but it would be darker and more cobbled together inside. But the "improvements" that a couple of my neighbors have made only serve to make their houses look worse. They are trying to compensate for something but not in the right way, really. So I think if you are looking primarily at location, you should really consider how the houses you look at "feel" on the inside, and not so much the face that they present to the street. (Since it's a development with similar houses). You really want something that works well inside, where you are actually doing the living rather than something that looks good on the outside--if you can't have both.

Those solid wood cabinets you have are almost irreplaceable. I have some like that in a late 1950s vintage rental house, and it isn't even an especially well built one. They've stood up to almost 30 years of tenants, and all I've had to do was replace a few worn out catches. Meanwhile, the fake wood vinyl covered cabinets in another allegedly higher grade rental, built just 20 years later, look much shabbier. I've had interesting times reattaching cabinet doors between tenants. The screws strip right out of the particle board. Lizzierobin, I had a coworker a couple of decades ago who'd been raised in the 1950s and would have loved to have your "before" kitchen! When he and his wife (also a fifties kid) finally settled down, they bought a former rental that still had some of its "mid century" decor like they'd grown up with. The bathroom (only one!) had matching green sink and toilet, and the classic white tile walls with black trim and basketweave black and white tile floor. Unfortunately, their kitchen had been redone with generic big-box-store cabinets and Formica-slab countertops. They already had scrounged up vintage appliances, and one of their next goals was to find salvageable period cabinets and boomerang Formica counters. Now that some of those old Formica patterns have been reissued, maybe they finally have the kitchen of their dreams. :)