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Thanks! I will save that photo. Do you think varnished wood or some type of powdercoated metal or even stainless steel? I'm thinking that we don't want it to "pop" too much, since the whole point of removing the deck was to de-emphasize those doors and draw attention to the actual front entryway on the perpendicular wall there..... Speaking of which, you'll get this vision, I think: do you think it's nuts to do some sort of modern treatment of the entryway "alcove" when the rest of the exterior is pretty traditional? I mean, we've removed the hideous fake colonial shutters, and the bottom grids from the windows, but we're keeping the upper grids and doing those shingles and the painted "brick". I'm playing with the idea of cladding that little recess where the entry door is in natural fir or cedar. Varnished... Ideally I'd like a full panel, marine plywood, but I can't figure out how to finish that properly at the outside corners. So, maybe horizontally-installed clear planks? .... With clean, modern-font stainless house letters....? The side entrance (to the left in the sketch, next to the garage door) that we use all the time will have a varnished fir craftsman-style door with square sticking. So it might be nice to carry that varnished-wood thing around to the front entry...??? The actual front door will hopefully be the one there now, a full-height divided light model, if I can strip and refinish it. The idea would be to emphasize that entryway, and also, just look cool :) Is that just too weird??? I really like mixing modern and traditional elements inside, but I'm not sure it is such a good idea on the exterior. Then again, this little house is a funny mixture anyway. It was built in 1956 and has some real 50's elements like a full brick hearth wall and no crown moldings... but also some more traditional elements as well. So maybe the blend of modern/traditional works? What do you think?

This thread has a kitchen with similar colored kitchen cabinets and she has white trim. http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4167890/painting-kitchen-cabinets-need-soft-white-color-suggestion-please?n=52 I think somewhere in the posts she also mentioned the existing colors and it may be similar to what you are looking for. I would start with just the wall color first and leave all the trim for a later time. Just the wall color will make a huge difference. Painting trim may take a lot of research to make sure that you are using the right type of paint or you will have a sticky never drying mess so if you do try this make sure to start with a small section in a low traffic area. If you are on a budget you may check out habitat for humanity and the oops section at the big box stores. I took 5 gallons of SW Sea Salt and many gallons of other popular colors last year and I think others do the same so you may get lucky and find something you like. And you may want to post over in the decorating forum as it gets more traffic.

Hey if it helps I live in an urban area and I'm on my deck right now which overlooks block after block of brownstones, row houses and tenements, some dating back to 1630s, brick mixed with painted siding. I've never really noticed the window trims before this thread, and I'm no expert at all. But if it helps I can tell you this: 1. The only white window trim I'm seeing is on painted siding, not brick. 2. Most of the brick has dark trim, not black, more like charcoal or chocolate brown. (I'm terrible at describing colors but hopefully you get the idea-- dark, but not black). 3. The few scant brick homes with lighter trim have more of a yellowish/ cream -- not white. One of them happens to be an old school building and the strip below the roof line is also cream, but I think it's actually brick, not paint. The other brick buildings seem to have matched that strip to the roof color. Whereas the painted siding homes have just painted that bright white. None of them have shutters. Our condo's building which dates to 1889 has the same brick and chocolate brown trim and sashes. After observing all this, I'm going to say the photoshops with white trim just look off to my eye. But so does the black. Needs to be dark, but not quite black.