You don't like my roof huh? Power washing a roof is advisable? I would think the pressured water might get up under the shingles-tell me what you know about that practice plz. GTK on the layout and yes i have power run to the door. Did it back when I rewired the front of the house. I was also looking for any design input on the covered area above the door. The idea picture is too big for what I have to work with. I'm not sure if I just need to shorten the arch (width) or maybe with a different design all together. All I know is I want the area above the door to be solid and the rest a perg. Thanks for input!

Azan, no offense to others expressing their opinions, this is where you really do need the service of a competent designer, who truly understands what constitutes good design which you will NOT get from the contractor who's giving you a quote that covers design, materials & labor, or friends, family or neighbors. Speaking of which, do you live in an HOA? If you do, get a copy of the design standards or architectural guidelines and find out what you have to do to get your proposed alteration through the review committee. You may well be stuck. You currently have a modern builder's silly notion of what constitutes a "colonial". I am so sorry to say, again no offense to others who think it's a beautiful colonial house, it isn't. And there are probably another 20 down the street from you, with minor variations, all designs that would have given colonial era master builders (where design and construction are combined) a convulsion. There are all kinds of things wrong with the facade composition, like 3 different window proportions and shapes, which no amount of landscaping will solve and you are absolutely right that the porch is a problem, but it's not about brick vs stone. Changing a consistent material on a house is the last thing you should do to "improve" the look. When I was in graduate school, a one-off course was offered on "facade composition" one summer. Finally, a professor teaching us aspiring architects how to design a facade, rather than all that nonsense about "form-making"! I stayed just to benefit from his wisdom. Guess what, there were 30 plus grad students taking this course, and the historic preservation expert told us, we will team up in pairs, analyze historic facades, and we'll talk about it. Really, that's the class? Yes indeed, it's called a graduate seminar. Imagine that happening in med or law school! (Hey, I may be the professor but I am not a practitioner, why don't we just get together and learn from one another?) He didn't teach us the principles and theories of facade composition, though here and there he offered some useful observations. Undergrad & grad arch'l school, not one professor taught us anything about facade composition. Not one. Imagine! So I went to the library, dug up old architectural magazines, from the early 1900s, and taught myself, by analyzing facade compositions I admire. You can do the same. Get a couple books on historic colonial architecture, or better yet on your next getaway, go visit historic places filled with colonial architecture, like Colonial Williamburg, Annapolis or Alexadria (if you live in VA). Not everyone can design well or cook well, but everyone can learn to appreciate good design or good cooking.

dropping the window down could well be odd on the inside. i'd leave it alone for now. get the outside work done. it may be a non event with so many new things to look at on the outside. how about just adding larger trim to the top of the door?

I think you should get away from the carnival-fun-house-ish angles and offsets and do a conventional, simple set of steps and walk, out of concrete ... with coloring and/or patterning if you like ... being careful not to conflict with the siding. The stoop (just one level) could be a wood or concrete deck, but concrete would be longer lasting and look nice, too, being of the same material as the steps. Have the centerline of the walk meet the house and drive, straight on, not at an angle. Bring the walk farther out from the house face. The house has a fair amount of mass. A broad set of steps would be better proportioned with it. Editing to add ... this is something you would determine in PLAN VIEW. Perspective drawings can be misleading about detail. A plan view would show how much overall space you have and how much is allotted to the various components. One would also need to have knowledge of exact grade while they're doing the planning, since there is slope involved.