Flyleft, No, nothing helps w/ the stink! Ah, the mystery behind my handle...Actually, in my household, "Stinky" is a term of endearment! When the cat is being particularly full of her self she's "stinky." When my husband does something annoying, the nice way of telling him so is to say, "That was stinky behavior!" Don't know how it caught on, but in good times & bad, we're all just stinky! There you have it...mystery revealed. Ironically, no one on the planet could be more into things smelling nice than I am! Potpurri for the house, home fragrance spray for the house, cleaners selected for their fragrance as well as cleaning abilities. Love fragrant bath gels, body sprays, scented candles...minty toothpaste, mouthwash & always have Listerine breath strips w/me! Have a vase full of eucalyptus in downstairs powder room so it always smells fresh. I'm a clean freak & part of my motivation is to keep things smelling nice. SO, in the conventional sense, am probably one of the best smelling people around...but if you ask my husband (& cat)...they'll tell you.. I'm very, very stinky!

I would not paint the brick. You take a no maintenance product and turn it into a long term maintenance issue. Deco has a good idea of beefing up the columns. If a new front door is not in the budget then paint the one you have and add a POP of color to the front of the house, drawing the eye to the entrance. None of your windows are appropriate for shutters. They would have to be so wide to cover the windows that they would not look right. If you're going to use white then use one color of white for the trim and the windows. If you use two different whites the one on the trim is going to end up looking dingy when seen with the windows. Your shingles are a brown so I would stay away from black. You could paint the trim taupe (brown/gray), sage green, etc. and leave the windows white. If you wanted to do a porch rail I would paint it the same color as the trim. New landscaping would of course also help. If you're interested in seeing some virtual makeovers of your house check out my web site, Creative Visual Concepts.

I feel that if you paint the trim around the window, then you should paint all other trim. It would look odd otherwise and honestly, it would look like only parts of the home have been freshened up. There's a house I drive past that apparently buys a run of siding as the owners' budget allows. So it's been a slowly disappearing face of Tyvek wrap for the past 4 years. Personally. I wish they had just saved up over the years and done it all at once. So I also vote for just waiting until you can do it all at once. If I can barely tolerate/ignore the exterior of my house for 12 years, anyone can. I don't think the other responder was suggesting that you paint the garage door the same CURRENT color, but instead, once you do paint the stucco, make the garage the same color. I personally think cream colored house, or gray, with black trim would look sharp. Can you find more of those eaves and add them to the entrance at some point? Have no clue if it's possible, just a thought. Please make sure whatever siding you paint, you paint it all, not just what faces the street. Trim those shrubs too. Just saw that brick on the front, if that's the only place you have the brick, I'd budget for removing it. Looks ridiculous. Keep us posted.

Thanks Flo! I mentioned silver birch as a possibility but Bev, a pro, said no, but she might not have realized I was considering the Loopy Crab look. I agree, the ceilings of the porches make the wow factor so I would do the same. What about the railings on our house. Leave them white? We have shutters on the front of the house unlike Loopy. Maybe paint those and the front door turquoise too, or leave all that stuff white? PS.. let me know if you want to visit your sister but stay at our house! Haha So much fixing up to do. If you are curious, google “Sandtrap Surfside SC” Feel free to give me tips for the interior! We are looking at LVP floors, new paint etc and I haven’t even picked out these dumb shingles yet.