Oooh! Pretty area. We do get a lot of sun, but not the past few days. Did you get a lot of wind yesterday, too? What a mess! Well, I don't know what your budget is, but the first thing I thought of was making the kitchen into the dining room (changing out the front window, to match the one in the living room) and adding about 15' to the back of the house. To put on an addition, you just need to run your roofline parallel to the existing roofline, making a gable. I set the gable back a few feet on each side, from the main part of the house. This gives you room for a galley kitchen that flows into a corner banquette, with access to a back deck. I moved the bathroom over to the bedroom area, with a closet and the bedroom, behind it. If there's room (I know the measurements aren't exact) I added a pantry, a small hall closet, and possibly some linen shelves, behind the chimney...otherwise, picture wall. (LOL) That's always what hall space turns out to be, isn't it? What do you think? Would something like this work? I really like the front of your house and your little mudroom addition, so I put the new addition on the back, with a wrap around deck...and maybe a hot tub? Sorry it's such a rough sketch, but I don't have any software. Hopefully, you get the idea :)

Thank you for your kind words. Where was your family's company located? I understand the method the Sterchi family employed very early on (they bought the land this house was built on in 1845 and passed it down) was to purchase wooded land, cut the trees and make furniture out of the hardwood and then turn the land into very productive farmland. Our house was the 3rd house built on this spot that served as the main house on a 1,500 acre estate. Of course Sterchi Brothers Furniture stores were all over the southeast. I believe there were 76 stores operating when it was sold to a major furniture chain.

To me, "McMansion" is to "Mansion" (as in, the Biltmore or even your average a Victorian mansion) like a Big Mac is to fine dining. Sprinkle the bun with sesame seeds, slather it with "special sauce", leave a peek of bland, green iceburg lettuce hanging over the edge, it's still just a pre-formed, fatty beef patty on white bread. Sure, you can "live large" in the McMansion, the same way you can get full on the essentially empty calories of a Big Mac. But if aesthetics and style and taste actually matter to you, you'll find it hard to be happy with an oversized tract house. That's because deep down, even though it's been fattened up with granite counter tops, Palladium windows in the bathroom and SS appliances and supersized to the point that even the dog can have his own room, you suspect that it's still not worth the money. It's also why, despite her defense of the people who do do buy the oversized tract houses commonly known as McMansions, igloochic does not live in one. Deep down, she knows better. Hers is the real thing ;^)

Worthy, I don't think "welcoming" was really high on the list for the facades facing that street at the time they were designed. At the time, the street they were on still had the potential to be little more than a feeder for a planned cross town expressway one major block south. That project was quashed in the early post Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses era. Fortress like, was more like it. However there are large glass areas in other parts of these houses. My house is on a slightly quieter street and is less forbidding but it still appears have few windows. But in reality the entire front of the house is a ribbon of windows at the first floor ceiling line, which lets in a lot of light, and they don't have to be covered because no one can see in. The more conventional houses on the street with normal or large windows have closed window treatments all the time. I have none. And there are two walls of glass in my house. They are just in areas that aren't apparent from the front street level. So in an urban context at least, I can understand the importance of the inside vs. the outside appearance. However, I do agree that it is different for a lone standing house on it's own lot when you are starting from scratch. But I am not so sure that the exterior is undervalued, so much as it is a reflection of the convoluted floor plan of the interior. And many of these houses are just as convoluted in plan as they look in elevation.