Just yesterday DH and I purchased a new entry door to replace our 22 year old 6 panel door. We went with a fiberglass door called "Santa Fe," and will be using two clear full glass sidelights. We live out in the country so privacy isn't an issue. We plan to stain the door to look like wood... I wasn't sure either about what style to go for, but this door seems like it would work with several style houses. Our house is a one level ranch with horizontal vinyl siding and a hip roof. The link below shows a very similar door to the one we purchased. Here is a link that might be useful: entry door

My definitions correspond mostly to christopherh and to this wikipedia entry. Side split: Walk in to living, dining, kitchen on one side of house. Walk sideways up six steps to bedrooms or down six steps to family room. There is often a fourth level subbasement below the living dining kitchen (completely underground) Back split: same as side split but you walk up toward the back of the house instead of at the side. Raised ranch -- Walk in to basement. Walk up 12 steps to upstairs (living, dining, kitchen and bedrooms all upstairs. See the picture window indicating living room on the second floor of this house: (but when I did a google image for raised ranch, I got lots of split entries) Split entry: Walk in to a landing. Go up six steps to main floor or down six steps to basement. I like side splits the best, but my husband dislikes them as they're hard to add on to. Unless they were built with spacious bedrooms upstairs you're very limited for adding a master suite. Split entries are the least desirable for whatever reason. Lots of people love them. You get a daylight basement out of them, which is nice. But there's something about being confronted with stairs as soon as you walk in a home that seems to turn buyers off. I live in Canada, so basements are almost mandatory, but I also live in the land of granite bedrock, so basements are very expensive. So split entries are SUPER COMMON here as a way to avoid blasting out a deep basement. This post was edited by robotropolis on Mon, May 5, 14 at 9:39

Anything is possible provided you can pay for it. Changing a bi-level to a 2 story or cape would not be worth the cost. Not only would you need to relocate the door to the lowest level, you would then need to completely relocate the stairs to another part of the house. That will cause you to lose some significant parts of the 1st and 2nd floors to accomodate the new stair, but will likely require some major reconfiguring of the upper level halls and possible bedrooms to accomodate the stairs. If the house is within your budget, works well for you and your family, but isn't quite the 'style' you want...I'd forget about the 'style' and buy the house and livie in it 'as is'.

Our neighbors have a large house with similar siding amd when they moved in they painted the siding white and the trim a soft black, kind of like what housaon posted. It took a few days to get used to since it is a very large house but it looks great now, very fresh and current and certainly less expensive than replacing perfectly good siding. they also refreshed all the exterior light fixtures to modern black fixtures which added to the overall modern effect. i think a simialr treatment would work well on your house. And I agree the shutters should go.