are you , by chance, doing a metal roof? since you like the grays, what about bring in some black or dark charcoal, and warm wood (cedar or redwood,,,posts or horizontal siding, etc)? you got the white vinyl windows? are those staying?

do you have an actual pic of what you want you house to look like?

No, I'm not getting a metal roof. I love the way they look when they're new and they have several advantages. But they just don't age well. Every one I've seen eventually looks old and dingy and dirty. Leaves and brush that land on the roof tend to collect there. At least that's how they all end up looking here in L.A. The roof I get will be gray or black. I have a deposit in for a Tesla solar roof, it looks amazing but the experience with them has given me very serious reservations.

The white vinyl windows were already here when I bought the house and they're staying.

There are two gates on each side of the house that will be wood. But wood means maintenance and I'm trying to limit my use of wood to a few specific areas because I hate anything that requires upkeep.

I feel like if I was going to put siding on those posts I'd just use tile because there are so many more options. And siding generally has to be painted which means...more upkeep.

But what I'm trying to figure out for starters is the shape of the posts/columns rather than the finish. If I go with the skinny posts is that going to look wimpy? Or would I be missing an opportunity to do something a little more bold?

I'm not sure what you mean by an actual picture of what I want the house to look like. As in a Photoshopped version of my house?

forget actual. how about, 'a pic of something similar of how you want your house to look'. you know what you want. You're asking for help but we have NO idea of the look you're after since the house is in it's original condition.

but regardless, I would not do skimpy, wimpy posts.

To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time looking at photos of houses other than when I was picking my colors. I really don't have a lot of design options here other than the shape of the supports for the overhang and how I'm going to finish them. How I want my house to look is nothing like it can look, I am drawn to very modern designs which I'd have to build from scratch to achieve. I can post some photos but you'd probably roll your eyes at me...

I did post that one photo of the gray stucco with metal channels and I really like that look. If I go with the beefier columns I'm going to stick with that look as originally planned.

But seeing the front of the house wide open with minimal obstructions gave me pause and made me consider keeping the supports to a minimum. If I did that the channels don't work and I'd have to figure out how to dress them.

Like you, I am leaning towards the beefier columns. I hate that I used the word wimpy to describe the other option because it automatically has negative connotations. They don't have to be wimpy if they are thinner. But maybe the fact that I called them wimpy is the answer I'm looking for.

from a structural stand point, I'd find out what type of support is required to hold up the overhang, and go from there.

Geez... Give me a little credit here. The skinny supports are more than sufficient. This is real life stuff, not a simulation ;-)

I'm supposed to know that based on what you've written? give me some credit! do you know how many people come on here a day asking for advice on things such as , "i'm going to open up my kitchen and take out this wall". when they get a response like, "um, have you checked to see if it's load bearing?" Their reply? "What's that mean? I'm just going to take a sledge hammer and knock it out".

so please, not everyone is informed like you seem to be. don't jump my sh*&!

that's exactly the look I had in mind (grovers mock up) of when you were describing what you wanted. these roofs last a lifetime, so when you say they crack and peel and look worn, I have to question the quality of those that were chosen. they do look damn good though

groveraxle - Thanks so much for the Photoshop! I love the roof and the column you put in there! I revised your version to better reflect the final look but my Photoshop skills aren't so good so parts of it (like front door) are a mess.

I did not say metal roofs crack and peel and look worn. I said they look dingy and dirty because of all the stuff that accumulates on them. Unless you're going to pressure wash the roof on a regular basis it ends up looking like a car that hasn't been washed in ages.

I've honestly given a lot of thought to standing seam roofs and appreciate all the benefits. They do look great when they are clean but they are never clean when I see them. Maybe this happens more in So Cal than in other places for some reason. I don't know. But every time I see a metal roof I scrutinize it because I'm evaluating how it would look on my house; and I always come to the same conclusion that it looks dirty. I've literally seen piles of leaves and debris accumulated against the seams on some roofs. It's a shame too because they are usually on very nice, high end homes and that nice expensive roof is the weakest link (visually).

Since the pitch of my roof is not steep I think this problem would be especially acute.

Perhaps there is some kind of sealant that can be applied to prevent this from happening but then we're looking at something that's going to require regular maintenance.

usc, if you're going for a modern look, do not do four separate posts like you show. Actually, it would be helpful to see the whole front of the house, but I was envisioning a single very wide post -- almost a wall --since you said that's the only support you need. Putting posts all along the front disrupts the linear quality and you want to emphasize that, not break it up.

Shingles, not nearly as modern a look:

all homes come with maintenance. getting up on the roof to hose it down once a year isn't a big deal. if it is, hire someone. It's a small price to pay for a roof you'll never have to change or replace. even w/a regular roof you still need to do maintenance and yearly clean-up to get rid of leaves that will trap water in the valleys and wreck havoc on the roof.

Aha. Now I see why you like the Tesla solar roof.

that one looks nice. usc, what reservations do you have w/Tesla? I'm afraid to ask what the cost is for that.

Beth, from Tesla's website:

"When you include the benefits of the solar production, Solar Roof will
cost less than a regular roof. In fact it may earn you money – as an
example, the out-of-pocket cost of a Solar Roof for a typical home in
Maryland will be around $52,000, but after considering the tax credit
and the value of energy it generates, the roof will actually pay for
itself and earn you about $8,000 over 30 years."

Yikes.

Perhaps I wasn't clear in explaining the situation but I do need the four posts. The only question is what those posts are going to look like. They can be as thin (~4x6) or as beefy as I want them to be. If eliminating them was an option I would have opted for that but it's not.

So that is the question here, how should these overhang supports be designed?

As for the roof, I didn't expect this thread to get into that subject but Houzz conversations often go off topic. The Tesla roof is more expensive than they lead you to believe. But I have an issue with Tesla itself. They took deposits was too soon, they were dishonest about the stage of development the product was in, they were dishonest about when it would be available, they do not communicate, they do not answer questions. I no longer trust Tesla so now I have to question if the product will perform as they say or be as durable as they say. Simply put, Tesla is a terrible company to deal with and they are presently on very shaky financial ground so I'm afraid of losing my deposit. The BBB gives Tesla a grade of F because of their poor customer service. You do not get an F from the BBB unless you are purposely terrible.

Anyway, this is the style of roof I plan to install, I think it will pair well with my house.

I'd like to not discuss the roof anymore. That decision isn't pressing but I need to make a final decision on the format of the columns in the next 48 hours. Feedback on that please! :-)

If you want a modern look, then skinny posts are out. I would like to see the whole front of the house from end to end before weighing in again. Can you give us a shot from further back?

WRT the roof discussion, usc, discussing it is not off track. Designers NEVER deal with an element in isolation; your roof decision will impact the rest of the design.

Do you need to replace the tile roof, or do you just want to?

I am not a fan of the metal bands. They look commercial. I don't think this has staying power.

These houses are post 1980 and pre 1940. They are minimalist, modernist, or deco-moderne. Deco-moderne also tends to be mixed with Spanish, like yours, coastally, (and Tudor inland)

My vote is all white. Actually all white with narrow black windows but since you have the white windows. Keep in mind all the permutations you went through in the kitchen. Some of these do have banding, but it is in the material itself.

grover - I love that you stuck a pivot door on one of your examples. I am planning to change my double doors to a pivot door. In your mock ups you have a thick first column, that one can also be skinny if I went in that direction.

I will look for a clear photo of the front of the house and post it. To the left of the porch is my garage where I have a couple of faux columns so the thicker columns would look like a continuation of those.

I understand that the roof is part of the overall design conversation. I just didn't want to get into a deep discussion about the roof until I decided on the columns since I need to make a decision by Tuesday. There is no timeline for the roof.

Pal - Not sure if it makes any difference in your thinking but I wouldn't have so many metal channels as you see here. I just took a picture of that place because it had the right colors and size channels I like. But I would only have two or probably three channels around the columns (evenly spaced). The example here with five channels is too busy for my liking.

In the back, my house is about 1/3 gray so making the columns gray would tie the front in with the back. A ton of new modern homes here in So Cal are going with a two tone motif, some even more than two colors. In my case the white is a typical stucco 20/30 sand finish and the gray parts are a super smooth acrylic stucco so there's a combination of colors and textures.

The existing barrel roof doesn't have to go but I hate on my house, it looks like some kind of weird architectural fusion of two styles that don't go together. It was fine before I made all the changes.

OK, here's a photo of the full front of the house before any work started.

There's a lot of vegetation obscuring the house so below represents what's behind the brush and how I envision the finished result.

To the left and right of the garage doors is a brick stack, those would be gray like the columns and would have matching channels. Then there are the four overhang supports we've been talking about. It is wide open in between the columns, that's what those white boxes represent. The chimneys you can see from the front will be painted gray as well.

Here's a photo of the back of the house. The stucco isn't finished but you can see there is a lot of glass. This isn't going to pair well with the existing roof.

Here is the gray I'm using, this was a sample the contractor made for me to see it on the house.

I suppose it's a little late to suggest that all these decisions should have been made before anyone picked up a sledge hammer. Are you pouring a slab under roof next to the house? That would probably make a difference in my choice.

Here are your striped columns:

Here's the thing, we weren't sure what to expect when we demo'd the brick. We thought we'd find thick support beams under the brick which we'd frame and then stucco. Fully expected we'd have to work around whatever existing structure was in there.

Well we did find something very similar to what we expected but the wood was rotted so badly that the supports have to be replaced and so this is why I have the unexpected option to go with skinny posts. If the existing overhang support was sound and wasn't being replaced this thread wouldn't exist because there would be no option for skinny posts. It's a bit of good fortune that I discovered this weakness and have the opportunity to address it.

So yes, I agree it would have been nice to have a concrete game plan before doing the demo but it wasn't really possible.

I'll also clarify that the skinny version wouldn't be metal posts. We've already started to replace the rotted supports with 4x6 wood studs so after framing and stucco they'd turn into something like 8x6 posts at minimum. I envision the beefy version as 14" deep by 21" wide columns.

I think you are referring to slab under the overhang, correct? There is already a cement slab there which I will probably tile over because it is showing its age. And because there are a few rows of bricks in the cement which I'd like gone.

The grey looks somewhere between lilac and periwinkle blue on my phone and my computer. It may look different in real life.

I really would not do the metal banding. I don't think it will age any better than brick arches you just removed. Actually I think the arches would have been fine had they been white stucco and a foot taller. It was a matter of trying to squeeze a detail on a house that wasn't proportioned for it.

I thick you could do an incised line or detail in the stucco rather than the metal banding.

I think you have to be careful about removing so much detail from this house that it starts to look like a stucco box.

Is that the finished flashing detail on the rear deck?

The grey is really hard to capture well in a photo, it never seems to come out right no matter how I adjust my settings. Here is another photo of it that is closer to the true color.

To me incised lines seem more commercial than the channels. I usually see them on big buildings with huge monotone walls, to break up the continuous mass. I've always thought of them as a cheap way to create detail.

I've taken a lot of your past suggestions to heart but I really like the way the channels look in grover's last post. In this case I'm OK with it not aging well because I'm confident I will always like it. If I come to tire of the channels I can paint them the same color as the stucco and make them fade away.

I have come to learn that with modern homes it is easy to push things too far and end up with something really boring. That's part of why I'm using two color and two textures. I think the channels and glass railing help too, and I have a multifaceted sloped roof rather than a flat one. I really don't think I'm in danger of crossing the line into something that looks like one of those square boxes.

On the back deck you're seeing the unfinished base shoe for the glass and flashing blend together. The base shoe will get a metal cladding over it, color TBD. The flashing is a mess though, my contractor has gotten multiple earfuls from me about it. I have to address this. Have any suggestions?

Hmm. I don't think the course lines on any of the houses I posted above look cheap.

I have to top my parapet walls because of water infiltration and I am using soldered copper. My house has two coves on the facade that need to be followed.

I am going to go forward with the metal channels. They are unique and I just like them.

Initially, I was going to space three channels to produce four equal sized sections, but I kind of like the way grover did it, spaced farther apart.

The stucco guy is going to ask me to tell him exactly where I want the channels. Should I just eyeball it or be more precise/mathematical about it? Looks like maybe the rendering he made is 2/9 (two-thirds of 1/3) - 1/3 - 1/3 - 1/9 (one-third of 1/3).

I feel like the most anal, OCD person in the world right now. But I just don't want to make a mistake on something like this that's so hard to fix.

Here's a progress photo of how it looks with the columns framed.

Not a pro. Just offering a word of caution because you mentioned you don't want to make a mistake ... and you mentioned that you already have experience finding hidden rotten and/or moldy wood.

Do not be surprised if the particle board wrapped around your porch post framing, which appears to be sitting directly on a concrete porch floor, ends up that way as well if any moisture at all gets to it through whatever paint of cover you add to it.

Get some painters tape and try some different configurations on your posts. I would be inclined to leave more weight on the bottom, maybe start the banding around the break between upper and lower windows, then divide the rest into four equal parts. Something like this:

Thanks for the heads up regarding the potential for water damage. Here's the interface between the posts and the floor.

The exterior framing of the posts is technically OSB not particle board. Inside the framing are the actual support beams. Both framing and beams are resting on a raised concrete platform that is above the actual concrete floor. Also, this is going to be covered with stucco which will have some sort of waterproofing under it. And I expect the stucco will go to the floor.

Does this alleviate the wood rot concern? If not, what can be done to prevent water damage now? Reconstructing the posts is not practical at this point.

Grover - I liked your earlier rendition of the channels better, but now that I think about it, I'm realizing that if I replicated that spacing the bottom channel wouldn't be visible from the street if I have anything planted in front of the columns. Is that why you're suggesting I make the columns bottom heavy?

No, I'm suggesting you make the columns bottom heavy because it's more visually pleasing.

As for your posts, how are they tied to the concrete? I'm guessing your contractor used some kind of metal fastener which should be sufficient.

They are fastened with these massive Simpson Strong Ties. The look very durable to me.

I went with your suggestion and taped the channels using the dimensions you proposed. Here's what it looks like.

The columns to the sides of the garage doors are a little more bottom heavy than the posts because they go down lower. But I thought it would be best to line the channels by the garage with the channels on the posts. Fortunately it doesn't conflict with the sconce box. But it might restrict the size of the sconce I select if I don't want the sconce to overlap the channel.

I just went back up and looked at the first photo of this thread. Seeing that "before" pic makes me so happy. I hated those brick arches so much, it looks so much better now! At this point I don't think there's anything I can do to make it worse than what I started with ;-)

You're right; this house is on its way to being awesome. I did a quick mock up of where you put the channels...

I like the way the second one looks from the street. I actually thought about this. But the columns rise quite a bit above the fascia and you see more and more of them as you approach the door. And you see the entire thing from the backside as you leave the house. The back side actually goes up even higher but I didn't measure for that. See the front/back photos below.

Should I ignore that and just consider curb appeal and how the columns look from the street?

Since people asked, I found a photo of the support posts before they were framed. I was wrong about the huge Simpson ties, those are on top. At the bottom there is a wood base bolted to the concrete base and then the posts are connected to the wood base using some sort of metal bracket that is sandwiched around the post. Kind of hard to make that out without blowing the picture up.

Those posts are a 4x4 + 4x2 combined to make 4x6. On second thought, those brackets at the bottom might just be holding the two studs together rather than attaching to the wood base. I'm not sure.

And I confirmed that the stucco will go all the way down to the concrete floor and they'll be using Tyvek wrap to waterproof the posts this time.

So things are coming along nicely, but not without complications. I was going to go with breaking up the visible part of the columns (below the fascia) into equal sections but then one of the channels would go right through my sconce lights on the sides of my garage doors. So I made the sections a little larger to give me some space between the top channels and the electric boxes for the sconce lights.

One issue is that the house is old and so the fascia isn't perfectly straight/level. So the space between the top channel and fascia isn't the same on every column. My installer made the executive decision to keep the channels at the same level rather than shifting them up/down based on the level of the fascia. So far I don't think it's noticeable.

But I'd still like to give myself some more breathing room for the sconces. At the garage I'd like to put the top channels about an inch higher than they are on the columns. Do you think that would be obvious? There's at least ten feet between the garage and the nearest column. Here's a photo from before.

I haven't started looking for sconces but I feel my options will be very limited with tight spacing. An extra inch or so probably gives me a lot more options.

Never mind about the channels on the garage side.

Turns out the electric boxes for the sconce lights aren't on the same level so out of necessity the channels have to be shifted around in order to look right. I don't think it will be noticeable since I never noticed the sconce lights were off before.

It IS possible and relatively easy to move junction boxes, you know. ;-) Since you haven't chosen the sconces yet, just a suggestion that you make sure they're sufficiently large. I always hate seeing dinky little wall lights next to a great big garage.

The house is coming along really nicely. I think it's gonna look great. Can't wait to see the new roof.

I know they can be moved. But there's nobody here to move one and the stucco guys can't be held up waiting for that. It's probably not worth it anyway, I've never noticed it before and there are other things which are misaligned that are more noticeable (but hopefully not obvious).

If I try to fix every little thing it will be a bottomless rabbit hole and I'll never finish. I gotta pick my battles and just mitigate the ones that aren't practical to fix.

whaaa I read every word on this thread with great discipline ; not scrolling down for the final reveal… I am so sad that there is not one :-( will you please show us a pic of how the outside turned out!!! Please I love your home Thank you

As they say, you're house has great bones! I'm glad you have to keep the beams, you have a lot of options there, they are beautiful. Definitely consider a Tesla roof. They're beautiful and as another poster said, will pay for itself. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Oh my! Sorry Laura! I totally forgot to post final photos. Here are some photos of how the columns turned out. It still requires some imagination to picture the true finished product with a new roof, gutters, garage doors and painted eaves. It's still a disjointed Frankenstein mix of new and old.

What's notable about this last photo is at the end of the overhang there used to be another brick arch which was taken out to make a clean, straight doorway.

Lion - Tesla's roofs are rolling out VERY slowly. They are also costing considerably more than Tesla led people on to believe. And I'm worried about how long Tesla will be a viable entity. Many are predicting their demise and not in the distant future.

Tesla still has my deposit (made in the first few hours they were taking them) and if they ever call me I'll consider their solar roof. I've evaluated a lot of roof styles and theirs is definitely the nicest looking roof I've seen.

Thank you! It looks amazing, what a difference.. your home will be a show stopper when your complete… great great great! Thank you agin for posting the pics!