jejvtr: I like the first link you showed, but the second one did not work. You are right the columns look similar. Perhaps you should leave them afterall, they are growing on me. It has a certain delicacy with the arched roof and you may change you mind also once the trim is painted different than the house color. Which is probably another reason my vote is for a non-white base color--to accentuate your lovely trimwork. I'm glad you are looking at other homes similar to yours for inspiration. When we were remodeling last year, I always kept a digital camera in my car and I would snap pics of features/colors/etc of houses I liked--usually while picking up or dropping off my kids from school or sports practices. I would try to drive a bit in the residential areas. Then when we were finalizing paint, I had my paint swatches with me and I would go up to houses which I liked and compare paint swatches. Once you and your DH find an inspiration pic I think this is helpful to narrow down to an actual color. You will always see things we don't, like lighting and how it works from various angles. What does DH think? Still white/red?

Please rethink a combination of yellow and dark brown, especially with white. There's only one thing I can think about when I see that color combination and it's definitely NOT something I'd want to see in a kitchen (and it's a VERY popular exterior color combination around here, ugh). Very high contrast can be tough to work with. Try getting your colors a bit closer together in value - since you're going for a white on your cabinets and a pale yellow wall (BTW, BM Rich Cream is a very popular light yellow, although it doesn't look very yellow on the chip it goes quite yellow on the wall; BM Windham Cream is a nice soft yellow that has absolutely NO business being called cream), think about lightening up the color of the trim and wainscot to a midtone at the darkest. If you drop down to a semigloss on the wainscot and trim the "bashed-up-ness" ;-) should not show as glaringly with lighter colors as they do with a high-gloss finish; with such a reflective surface the light "catches" in the dings. It doesn't need to match the other rooms, and trim in a color-color is quite period appropriate for the 1880s - the Victorians were MAD for color. It's just not seen that much nowadays because white/off-white trim is more "in". What about a just-slightly-lighter-than-midtone green that picks up the soapstone's green for the trim/wainscot (a somewhat clearer green than the muddy tealish green that's there now)? Say third or fourth down on a BM strip? Green and yellow is a lovely pairing and will be cheerful and happy with the white. We have the same orangy old pine boards in our ca.1900 "Victorian Lite" (a very plain millworker's cottage, makes your farmhouse look elaborate!), although ours are random-width and mostly nicely wide, and it goes swimmingly with almost any green. I'm having a very hard time resisting using green in every room. :-) Blue is a color to consider, too, since it also goes marvelously with yellow and white. Classic combination. There's a gorgeous upscaled-old-fashioned kitchen in the kitchens thread in the Gallery area of this forum decorated in yellow and slate blue (photo #9). #22 uses a pale, pale yellow on the walls with white trim and a pale blue on the cabinet, there's no reason why you couldn't have the cabs white and the trim blue, especially if the kitchen is bright (IME light colors work best in bright rooms, they tend to go drab in darker ones). It's impossible to tell because these pictures were taken at night! :-) #25 is a great example of the green/yellow/white combination in a traditional country kitchen setting. Just wondering - won't it be a bit crowded up by the ceiling with the plate shelf AND crown molding? I'm puzzled. Love your island, the t&g doors, the transom... beautiful.

It's just a username, nothing else. I've had it since my own early days on the internet when someone suggested I use the name of a cartoon character for email and other purposes where the name would be visible to the public. I followed that advice. Snidely Whiplash was a cartoon character in my favorite cartoon "series" that was part of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. The other character of that continuing story, whose name I thought would be more awkward, was Dudley Do-Right. I could have also chosen Elmer Fudd, or Wile E. Coyote. I picked what I picked because I find it silly, whether you do or don't doesn't matter. Any meaning you find in a username, whether mine or anyone else's, is likely unintended.

Regarding the original photo the corner conifer is still the right size for the spot, the problem is that somebody pruned the bottom half of branches away. Instead it might have been better to tidy the upper part a little. Speaking of tidying the problem with the other two larger shrubs is they have been pruned into out of context geometric shapes. Otherwise the shrubs on the right suffer merely from being as yet too small to be in scale with the house - when you start moving forward be sure to choose plantings that relate to the house. Including kinds that will get big enough to match at. And skipping any formality of layout (identical pairs, straight lines etc.) or formal shearing maintenance pruning as your house does not have a geometrically symmetric façade, with a uniform pattern repeated throughout.