Love everyone's comments! It seems like some 70's homes have more character than others. Mine is more on the "character" side. It has some architectural features that could enhance the whole place with the right decor. I'm still figuring out the last part about the "right" decor! Gscienceschick: RetroRenovation is fabulous! I checked out their 70's lighting catalogs. How come we had dreadful fake bronze/crackled smoky glass fixtures instead of those beauties? I have already replaced all the lighting because it was so dim. Palimpsest: Thank you for the historical perspective. It helps understand the context the houses were built in. I'm not American, so it is very educating for me. Funkyart: I wonder if you have a picture of your accent wall somewhere on this site? I'd love to see your creative solution. It appears that in the 70's the pendulum swung from the openness of the mid-century architecture toward a more cloistered and intimate feel. I do like an earthy palette and I think it can be done tastefully. The see-through mid-century modernist interiors are impressive but I never could picture myself living in such a place without putting ceiling-to-floor draperies over the window walls. I'd like to find a balance - having some airy and bright spaces together with a few cocoon-like rooms. Our house has a potential for it. We have a bright dining room (a slider to a 2nd story deck and a large window on the adjoining wall) and roomy kitchen facing south, and we like to have meals alfresco on our large 2nd story deck. At the same time our two downstairs rooms are dark, although the floors are only about a foot below grade. I'm toying with an idea of re-making the downstairs in an Art-Deco-ish style - cozy, cocoon-like and in a rich color palette. Speaking of an ultimate blank state for a home, the only examples I can think of are new construction condos in Moscow, Russia. Most of them are sold "bare bones" - no interior finishes, lighting, cabinets, floors, etc. The assumption is that the new owners would rip out the builder grade stuff anyway and redo the interiors to their taste. There's no landscape to influence the style either since those residences are in high-rise apartment blocks. There are all sorts of creative interior solutions, some interesting and some outlandish. Unlike in the U.S., the "resale value" concept hasn't taken a hold in Russia yet. For those who are curious, here's a link to a interior finish/remodel company in Moscow area that serves middle-class customers. The top video is the apartment at the time of purchase. The bottom video shows the work done by the company on it. These owners opted for a modernist design, but if you click on the links in the top section of the vertical bar on the left, you'll see other projects done in a more traditional style. Many of them are fairly pedestrian - recessed lights, IKEA bathrooms, etc, but I like browsing such portfolios for occasional novel ideas. One of the projects on this site features a bathroom with a plaid yellow/black floor tile. I have yet to find tile like that! Here is a link that might be useful: Interior Finish and Remodel Company in Moscow

I would suggest when you do paint the house that you paint the whole house first with that strip painted out so he can see it without and paint that piece of the trim last as then you can see how it would look without and with it. Well what I was trying to say is your house does lean towards the spanish revival and you keep saying you want spanish and not tuscan, mexican etc. and really what is spanish color theme tends to be white or a very light color that reads white with a darker trim color such as brown, or more very muted colors. Landscaping makes a huge difference in how a house looks too. What I'm wondering is if you really have settled in your mind what you want the house to be or if you really need the house to be one particular style. Many color will work for your house as long as you pick something that works with the roof color. Maybe it is your mentioning spanish that throws me off. BTW if you look at the picture I posted it is a very simple style except for the tower and the other items are things your house has or will have too. You have arches, you have the curved wall, the raised trim, you're adding a pergola (not a porch like in the house shown). You could on your gable sides add corbels either dark stained wood or faux looking wood like you're planning for the garage door. If you look at a spanish villa - they tend to be white, with tile roofs, mainly boxy. Some have arches, some have railings that are often white and look like concrete formed (don't know the correct terminology). I guess I would ask yourself do you want the spanish look, or does it really matter and should you just go with a color that you like and not worry about trying to keep to a particular style?

My MIL's home in SF, across the Bay Bridge from this bungalow, was Mediterranean, not A&C, but was dated 1920. Her onsite-built cabs were of redwood, so heavily painted they constantly stuck. The drawers were slowly falling apart. Because of the face frames, there was a real loss of storage. Every corner (she had 3, U-shaped kitchen) was a Black Hole in which stuff got lost for decades. The entire house was lovely, but dark with a "closed-in" feeling. Most workmanship, especially in the Bay Area, was marginal. A lot of these were second homes and a code nightmare. You can never assume that the original was 'charming' and worth keeping, around here. The only original kitchen I have seen worth keeping from the 1920-1950 era in the many open houses we have gone to over the decades, is the one at Filoli Mansion! There is such a thing as adhering too slavishly to a rigid style. Frank Lloyd Wright built wonderful homes, but his chairs are torture devices, I can assure you from real experience.

I am not a designer but Iooking at the house the stairs bother me. Too tall and not in proportion with the house. Could you alter so that upon exiting house one would step out onto porch then instead of stairs going straight down have one or two steps left then the stairs begin again to go down. This will move the stairs to the right when facing the house and they won't appear to be such a formidable climb. A good designer could help you choose a nice width too, not as narrow as you have now. Of course your walkway will no longer line up with stairs so that will become another project, although most of it could still be used . Adding width with another material is a good suggestion as well I agree with prior recommendations to change the siding to horizontal at least on the lower part and lose the window boxes as they are not adding to the house. If the staircase is changed an opportunity opens for a good sized box to be incorporated at the top landing in front of the entrance door