I am relatively sure that you have two spirea (the lime colored ones) and two potentilla. It is a vining clematis on the very end and will need a trellis. The easiest thing to do is go to a nursery or big box store and look at the metal trellises they have since clematis can't wrap around the larger diameter of a wood trellis unless you cover them with wire. Something like what cearbhaill used for the mandevilla vines would be fine, but might need to be bigger if the clematis is one of the larger ones. (and despite the often repeated idea that clems like shaded roots, they don't need shade on their roots, just adequate moisture and some mulch to keep the moisture even. They prefer not to have root competition, so I'd keep groundcovers away from them. Spirea take well to hard pruning. I have two that are close enough to the house that they often get squashed during the winter by globs of snow falling from the eaves. I prune them down to a few inches and within a week they are putting out new growth that looks clean and symmetrical. I don't have potentilla, so I can't help with advice on those. Good choice to remove the spruce that was too close to the house. I'd put in a perennial or two there. In the area of the electric meter, you want to leave the meter reader room to see the meter. I might well plant a large pot and place it there, rather like cearbhaill did along the wall behind the pool with some bushy and draping plants in it. You could also add a trellis near the front corner to let your vine (honeysuckle?) grow around the corner. I'd probably plant a groundcover as well to help fill in some of the area between the shrubs. I can see something low with yellow flowers in your photo, but don't know if that was planted there on purpose. As at least one other person mentioned, you may at some point want to take up the sidewalk and move it farther from the house so that you have a more reasonably sized planting bed. Five feet is wide enough so that plants won't encroach on the walkway and will leave you room to paint behind them, but I like beds wider than that so I can plant several layers of plants and have something of interest going on most of the year. Alternatively, you add a wide bed on the far side of the walkway so that the walk goes through a garden rather than defining your garden bed.

Thanks all -- guess I should have mentioned that I had the cabinets custom made, so there was no manufacturer's touch up kit -- just a Snapple bottle of paint and another of glaze. Funny, when I asked the cabinet guy what to use, he said no one has ever asked him that before -- in 25 years!!! I also had to ask twice to get the extra paint and glaze, since apparently no one ever asked for those either. Live wire oak, that's what I thought about the caulk, too, and once it's in, it's not comin' out. Anyone else care to weigh in? I may also cross post this under Building a new home.

Spraying, rolling and brushing can be very close in appearance when done by a professional, using high quality paints. If you are a good spray painter, everything can be sprayed. A house interior that is sprayed should have the same even coverage of paint. Sprayed paint should never be stretched. Keep it at 350-400 sf per gallon. If you like some slight stipple on the walls, then lightly backroll with a 1/4" wool nap roller. I recommend high build primer over the new drywall. It will hide a lot of flaws and it sands well when needed. Paint the trim and install over the painted walls. Your plan sounds like a good one. Michael

I've used various brands and my favorite is Elmer's Wood Putty in the tub. Stuff is very durable. Our cabs are 30+ years old and before I painted I had to fill in a spot on where the oak laminate had worn off from years of water running down the counter at the sink. It was in a spot that came to a point. I built it up with the putty, even shaping the corner/point with it. Leveled as best I could, then sanded flush when dry. You can't even tell that the 'corner' in the wood design is actually putty. Painted it 3 yrs ago, wiping, etc. has not compromised it at all. It's good stuff!