Pal, can you explain or show me a picture of what you mean by a pierced stone riser? I'm not following...but I very much value your opinion on this! Joaniepoanie, you're probably right that I should start there. There could be a significant difference in price that'll tip the scales one way or the other. Although if one or the other is a clearly better choice, I'd be willing to pay more for it if it makes the most sense.

"All the trim in the house is a dark stain. I want to paint it all white because that will definitely brighten things." Paint colors don't exist in a vacuum, it's always about how they look next to another color, and bounce back light from windows and bulbs. Bright white woodwork and doors will make the Kilim Beige walls look dingy and dull by contrast unless you have bright white and Kilim Beige in upholstery and drapes too. Don't mix "muted/dirty/greyed" shades with clear and bright shades unless you have a lot of experience. Stick to one or the other. Maria Killiam has a knack of explaining clean/dirty, undertones and the rest. http://www.mariakillam.com/clean-vs-dirty-colours/ ******************** AS you can see the family room is wayyyy too dark Paint can't fix a dark room ... you need light bulbs or higher wattage for that. A better picture of that, taken in daylight or with lamps from another room will get you better advice. ************** "I was going to paint the main living room cool tones, gray, light blue, white etc. but after reading, I'm worried the room will look washed out because of the bow window that allows for so much indirect daylight. So I am leaning more towards warm tones on that side of the home" Warm tones look warm only because they bounce back warm tones from the incoming light. When the incoming light is already "cool" because it's north light, it gets really hard to see the "warm" and undertones are going to be driving you nuts. I had a warm yellow in the kitchen, and the light coming through leaves and bounding off the grass turned it a gaudy green every morning ... ******************** I would immediately paint that fake wood wainscoting Kilim Beige to make it vanish. Remove it later, but right now it's just plain ugly. What I see are the DARK, light-blocking valances in the kitchen, pale mauve (?) drapes in the living room, and the almost exclusively beige and tans in your furniture, and no color in the artwork or accessories. No rugs? That's a far larger influence on the "blah" feeling than the dark woodwork and beige walls. Save your money by keeping the doors until you have drapes and rugs that add color and interest. Paint should be the last decor thing you pick, AFTER furnishings and drapes, because there are thousands of colors of paint. Trying to find a rug to go with the paint is far harder than finding paint to go with the rug.

Budget and building codes permitting, you could recreate your entry. You might ... Remove the first floor roof from above the front stoop -- everything from the brick to the garage. Create a new forward facing gable roof over that area beginning at the ridge of the upstairs -- at least at that height or even above it -- and extending the roof of that forward facing gable to a point at least twelve feet in front of the downstairs exterior wall. About six feet of this will be your new front entry foyer with your front door moved to the new exterior wall facing the road. The rest will be your new front porch. Alternately, you could extend the forward facing gable roof only six or eight feet beyond the front exterior of your home to create your new entry foyer and then add a shed roof with two hip corners for your new front porch. You'll be enlarging the upstairs room on the left by extending the floor of that upstairs room into the vaulted ceiling space above your new porch; then you can move the original window to that new upstairs exterior wall of your forward facing gable. What front door and front porch post style you use will help define/redefine you home. You could also add an arbor across your garage that coordinates with the posts you use for your new porch.

Would not paint brick. If you want it darker, then you might consider staining it, keeping the grout visible (or painting it gray grout color after staining is complete). Perhaps you could add your screened porch on the back -- perhaps even wrapping it around the side of the house for more area. You could move all those plants, etc., to the side yard and then build at least an open front porch centered between the two downstairs windows (preferably with a concrete floor and at least 6' - 8' deep), keeping the barely sloped shed roof you add on each side of the existing roof beneath that smaller upstairs window. Do use the same roofing material all the way across -- perhaps metal roofing. When get your porch in place, then you could address the sidewalk and landscaping.