are you open to repainting the brick or does it have to stay yellow? If that's the natural color, fine (I thought it was already painted). perhaps a good power washing would help brighten it up a bit. I love the leaded windows off to the right. don't ever change those! normally the stucco portion is light and dark contrasting color goes on the wood trim&shutters. if you could do the brick in a dark gray, you could do something like this (except I'd pick a darker trim color.)

The overall look of your house is Tudor, but it has a lot of other elements tacked on that make it a mix of different styles. Thank the builder gods that you don't have a humongous double garage facing the front. Do not paint stone or brick or you'll be stuck with maintenance forever. Do not add shutters, which will add yet another style element to this blend of different styles. (The house below does have a double pair, though, if you're bent on them.) I'm not sure you can "update" something that doesn't have a single style. The current color actually does pull the stone and brick together. If you want the Tudor style to stand out, them do what Housson suggests picking a shade of the roof color for the timbers. Your stone entrance could use a little more drama with much larger light sconces. It's a shame the landscaping doesn't enhance the house as much as it could. A curved walkway farther out so that you could have more dramatic planting beds would have set off the house more impressively. What you have is fine but more suited to a smaller house.

I am no landscaping expert, but even something like this makes your entry more important. I'm sure that someone else will have some better ideas on how to improve this area and make it more welcoming. OK just saw the entrance image. Are we going for a contemporary home or an olde tyme cottage home?????? Have their been some changes to the original building?? The reason I ask is that I was getting ready to propose a contemporary garage door to go with your boulder stones. Which was do you want to go???

Hi Jason- Congratulations on your new home! The kitchen would be improved by changing the paint color to a less yellow color. (Or is it the lighting?) Please get cool spectrum light bulbs right away. The kitchen would look more modern if you refaced the cupboards. You mentioned shaker which is an option. More modern still is slab front which I like too. If you replace the door fronts in the kitchen, you might want to replace them in the living room as well. You might also think about changing the hardware. Cup handles are definitely not contemporary. As far as your island, blue is a very nice color. Painting over kitchen cabinetry is not easy at all, and when not done properly will peel and bubble. You do need some sort of leg there to support the edge of the island. You can talk to an experienced finish carpenter about substituting another type of leg. If you are going to get a white countertop, what is it about quartz that you like? You may get the same thing in Corian with more advantages. Why not invite a professional, Joseph Corlett, LLC into this thread and he will tell you why Corian is superior to quartz. I like the photos of the kitchen you like, but imagine those kitchens with your floors, how much richer they would look! Your floors are gorgeous, and with white cabinets and countertops and a blue island, dark floors might be just the right look. Tiling is not as easy as you think. However, you don't need as much as you have now, either. You only need a backsplash behind the stove, and if you want a modern or high tech look, you could do stainless steel up to the hood and no tile at all. After all, your hood will probably be stainless, right? What looks great is a mix of metals, and you could do a stainless hood with brass "straps", and brass light fixtures over the island as you have in your photos. I favor the ones with covered bulbs, and with non-transparent glass, because glare gives me a headache, but that's just me. I don't know that I would remove the fireplace altogether. You could just move the TV to the wall perpendicular to it. The other reason to move the TV is that the TV's width is too much for the fireplace. Generally something should be 2/3 to 3/4 the width of what it is above. So a painting or TV should be 2/3 to 3/4 the width of the piece of furniture below it. If you wanted to change the staircase, you could remove the vertical wooden spindles and install multiple thick metal cables with vertical metal bars periodically. However, if you plan to have children, you will need to cover it with acrylic or unbreakable glass panels so their little hands don't get stuck between the metal cables. You could also just do the thick acrylic or glass panels without the horizontal cables except having metal at the top and bottom. I would save this for very last, it is frightfully expensive. I hope you and your wife enjoy your new home in good health!