We're in the process of building our home and deciding/planning our outdoor kitchen. Our home is modern and white stucco. Our builder suggested white austin stone for the outdoor kitchen. We do not have stone anywhere else in the house. If you have a stucco home and outdoor kitchen, what material did you use to build your outdoor kitchen? I'm leaning towards having it stucco as well to match the house but husband like the austin stone idea. I'm afraid it will look weird that the outdoor kitchen is different from the rest of the house.

So things are coming along nicely, but not without complications. I was going to go with breaking up the visible part of the columns (below the fascia) into equal sections but then one of the channels would go right through my sconce lights on the sides of my garage doors. So I made the sections a little larger to give me some space between the top channels and the electric boxes for the sconce lights. One issue is that the house is old and so the fascia isn't perfectly straight/level. So the space between the top channel and fascia isn't the same on every column. My installer made the executive decision to keep the channels at the same level rather than shifting them up/down based on the level of the fascia. So far I don't think it's noticeable. But I'd still like to give myself some more breathing room for the sconces. At the garage I'd like to put the top channels about an inch higher than they are on the columns. Do you think that would be obvious? There's at least ten feet between the garage and the nearest column. Here's a photo from before. I haven't started looking for sconces but I feel my options will be very limited with tight spacing. An extra inch or so probably gives me a lot more options.

@Jen Nelson— that looks a lot better already! A lot less visual clutter and feels more open and welcoming. And I personally kinda like the boxwood hedges that you’ve left in place— you might want to consider working them into your new landscape design. In my own yard I have some ball-shaped boxwoods lining our front walkway with alliums (globemaster) and perennial wildflowers behind them. But I’ve got more of a cottage house/ garden vibe, so you should definitely think about what you want from your overall landscape plan and decide which of your established plants/shrubs will work with that vision (or work with a pro to develop a master plan— there are a number of places that you can pay a fee for just the design, and then DIY install yourself over time as resources allow).

You have a classic house with a lot of classic details. It sounds to me like "modernize" means to remove the classic details. However, your house is nicely done. The details are subtle, they add interest. If you remove some of them, like the window headers, you'll still have the columns at the corner of the rightmost wing. Modern windows and a modern door will fight with the columns and the fundamental style of your house. You won't get a modern look, you'll get a mishmash. Those headers and the columns, when badly done are a McMansion cliche. But yours are nice and cohesive. One of the hallmarks of a McMansion is style incoherence. That's what you'll be creating by trying to "modernize". That hedge is doing nothing for your landscape. I'd transplant them to the lot line, where a hedge makes sense and invest in a better landscaping plan. Keep the house as is. As the old saying goes: if you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with. Don't try to make it into something it's not.