Really nice home. Have you actually asked if you can match the brick? Do at least try.

If you like the Tudor look, the flat siding with the timber boards in the gable ends would be the way to go -- if you don't want the boards brown consider either black or a darker shade of the same color you choose for your siding. Also, since your home is ”tudoresque” as you say, you might be better served with the vertical and horizontal trim rather than the angled trim.

https://www.hgtv.com/design/decorating/design-101/tudor-revival-architecture

https://www.bhg.com/home-improvement/exteriors/curb-appeal/tudor-style-home/?slide=slide_484ef955-33d7-44f2-858e-8b90da784c66#slide_484ef955-33d7-44f2-858e-8b90da784c66

Not a fan of the flat roof porch w/arches in the drawing. It sorta looks as if someone is trying to mix Tudor and Spanish. Might try the flat roof but with a more square vibe -- straight pillars or posts ... perhaps with angled support/trim boards.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/464504149062491342/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/350506783488550882/

Your current garage is downstairs and your lot is sloped yet it appears from the drawing that you are planning to add your garage to the left of where the current garage is located but with its floor level with your house floor ... or am I misinterpreting that?

What rooms or garage space in what size are you adding and where?

Building in front of your home might be prohibited by set back rules -- know those before going further with your planning.

One other idea that you should consider, can you match the roof pitch on the new addition with the roof pitch on the existing porch at the right? I think a wider gable over the garage would look better since you are adding a porch over the door, eventually. The smaller gable seems out of scale, both on the old house and on the addition. If you look at the Tudor house above, you can see that the pitch of the large gable matches the pitch of the 2 side dormers.

I drew this out on a sheet of paper, so it might not be to scale. But it gives you an idea what I am trying to explain.

The reason for offsetting an addition (up/ down, forward/ back) is because when trying to extend a gable roof straight across (as in the proposed new drawing), the ridge line of the new gable extension will never match the old. There is always an obvious hiccup there that screams 'new addition'.

Whatever you do, I would go with stucco for the siding on the new part.

Thanks for taking the time to draw that out phassink! I think you are right and will bring it up to see if it’s possible.

Cilantro, yeah, it is not our ideal to extend the roof line but we did not have many options — we have a .15 acre lot. We are planning to do reused brick mixed with similar brick for the front garage part and then hardie stucco looking board and batten panels with the timber framing on the rest of the siding and have asked the architect for 3D renderings of that.

Although most of the house is beautiful, the basement garage was quite an eyesore and not particularly safe — a kid could easily hop off the railing around our front door and fall into the area and hurt themselves. I will be so relieved when the area is filled. In our minds this will be a huge improvement even if not what I would do if we had more land space. And it will give our family the extra space needed (and finally a useable garage!!) I don’t really like garages on the front like that, but we would have had to even do a detached one in pretty much the same spot so we figured at least with attaching it, we will get a good master bedroom and bathroom and plan to eventually make a reasonable sized kids bathroom.

Currently the 2 bathrooms upstairs are tiny — the master bathroom has like a 1 foot by 2 foot corner shower. Then the kids bathroom is just a bathtub and really not even a useable space for a bathroom :). We are just converting it to closet space it is so small :). We will also be able to finish the basement garage area —which was another attraction to us to this particular house—is that the basement has shockingly high ceilings for an old house.

And even though we are doing this work, we are still able to maintain the features of the house we love like original wood floorings, windows, cute porch. The parts we plan on changing were parts that had already been remodeled by previous homeowners so we also like that we can return the original house character to these areas. Like the previous owners had put in some terrible carpeting in the current master (unfortunately, we don’t think hardwoods are underneath. Unbelievably, we did find original hardwoods under some 50s vinyl tiles downstairs!! That was quite a project getting that tile up.) We are going to match the new hardwoods to the old ones. Our kitchen was also remodeled in the 90s and they put in a nice wood floor but it is a blonde oak rather than a floor that looks like the rest of the house so we will be able to return that as well in Phase 2. Then we also have one of those Art Deco tile bathrooms downstairs with peach, white, and black tile that we will never change (even though peach is not my favorite color) and is charming to me. And then I really like this idea of stucco/panels and timbers for the siding that I will think also give the house back some of its original character.

Suezbell — we did ask the mason to try to match the brick, and we will see what he comes back with. The old garage slopes down to the basement is not useable due to the slope and tightness of the ceiling with bigger SUVs. The new garage will be almost even with the house. We actually already have the permits for everything. But I am becoming a bit concerned now about the slope of the new driveway and think the garage does need to be lowered some. Thanks to apple_pie_order for picking up on that. I asked the architect what the grade would be for the driveway because she actually never told us (I will reserve my comments on that and give the architect a chance to respond, but I have private thoughts on it.) Our contractor is also concerned about the slope. I think I have been focused on so many other things that it just didn’t register to me.

Anyways, I think she was trying to mimic the arches in our current porch which I included a picture of. The arches are also found throughout our home so I like them. However, you are right that I’m not sure the flat roof makes sense. Thanks so much for your advice!! I really appreciate it!

Other arches:

The new garage will be 24x24. Here is a pic of the upstairs master suite that will be added on top of the garage.

Whoops here you go, not sure how that happened:

Then in phase 3 we plan to finish the upstairs. we will expand the current master bath into a kids bathroom. Convert the current super small kids bathroom into a closet for bedroom 2. move the laundry upstairs (yayyy!!). and finish the basement where our current garage is.

Your arches are beautiful. The scale seems wrong for that garage side of the house. Did you notice on my drawing that I put a porch with a 2-5% pitch with straight columns. I also kept the gable over the door, but I brought it out to meet the new porch line. That is what I tryed to do, but it is hard to show 3 dimensions on a sheet of paper..

Yes thank you so much for taking the time to do that phassink! So very kind! I passed your drawing along to see what she says :) Your porch is also more what I think we will want but maybe also incorporate some arching. Unfortunately, the windows on that side where the new porch would be are not very attractive and one of them is in the bathroom. But we also hate to change them and making the bathroom one bigger wouldn’t be possible without damaging original tile work in the bathroom. I think a porch there will draw attention away from the less attractive windows. We also of course need to clean up landscaping but have been waiting until we got our plans for what we are doing. You have been very helpful!

The little bathroom window on your future side porch? Don’t enlarge it. Make it special. Replace it with one that has diamond shaped muntins, or has leaded glass/stained glass. Phassink’s drawing is, I believe, better than trying to replicated the beautiful arches on the other part of your home. It is difficult to replicate, exactly, something that is that old, with bricks that won’t match. Instead, a timber framed Tudor side porch would compliment the other porch. Not mimic it. It is like trying to match patterns. Things don’t need to “match.” They need to “go” with each other.

Thanks so much! I almost included a comment about trying to switch out the bathroom window glass with diamond leaded glass but feared I would be laughed at because the windows would be mismatched. You are correct — I think that would help so much and now that people will be able to peer in that window (they couldn’t before because of the basement garage), it would give us a way to make the window more opaqu-ish as well. The bottom of it is currently opaque but not the top.

Ptreckel, what is your opinion for the siding for the attached garage (I know that the attached garage is not ideal. And I usually prefer to keep things how they were. But this basement garage is just not attractive, practical, or safe and attaching a a garage just seemed to make sense to give us more room since we would have to plunk a detached garage there anyway — and there is truly no room on the lot for us to put an addition somewhere else. This basement garage is original to the house and we even have pictures from the 30s/40s with it so a street facing garage is just part of the original design of this house is my thinking, but we are making it practical for the modern day and also not destroying anything original to the house in the process. We also plan to live here until we are too old to climb the stairs so are not necessarily worried about resale. The previous owners also put the ugliest deck I have ever seen where the garage will attach so it also allows us to get rid of that. And we do really need a garage — my husband has an electric powered car, and we need somewhere to charge it. He charges it at work but this is not always practical.)

Would you try to reuse brick or just use stucco or stucco looking siding for the garage area. I am beginning to wonder—as you mention —that trying to make it “match” the old is a mistake (the mortar and everything will look so different) and impossible and just using stucco or stucco looking boards would be better because it will “go” as best as possible.

Here is a picture of the house from 30s/40s and you can see the cement that is going down to the basement garage

And then here is the ugly deck. It is not even large enough to comfortably fit a table on and just doesn’t go. At all.

Match the brick in size and shape, and do your best with a colour match. Then stain both the old and new brick with Romabio so the whole house matches.

First of all, I love the original photo of your home with the dark brown shake siding! It looks better than your “matching” shake color. You might consider replacing it with a dark shake like the original. You certainly will want to continue that into the peak of the garage addition. Your garage doors will be the focal point of that. And I would prioritize dark stained wooden doors for the garage. With appropriate “carriage style” hardware. I would probably side the garage addition in a regular wood siding painted in a color to match your brick. Often in the renovation of old homes, it is advised that the new addition be distinctive from the old so that it is not mistaken as original to the property. I would see a simple siding in the color of your brick to be just that. An acknowledgement that this is new. The roofline will be continuous, the shakes above will be the same as in your other gables, but…this is not the same era. One other thing to note: only the street facade of the addition will be visible to the public. The bulk of your home will remain unchanged. Just this facade of the garage. And…very little of the siding on it will show. Keep it simple. Add a beautiful period appropriate light between the two wooden garage doors, too!

I drew out the idea I had for your porch. The framing on the gable could be open or enclosed.

I like the idea of stucco with board trim. You could do a color. Keep the stucco very light tan to go with the brick.

Maybe a color closer to the brick.

Thank you for porch design phassink! Keeping this! That is so kind.

Thanks for all the suggestions ptreckel! I was def planning on dark brown garage doors and carriage lights! Thanks for being optimistic about my addition!

Houssaon, thanks for taking the time to do this — so awesome! I really like the creamier shade in the first one and was thinking about the more traditional dark brown for the timbers. I thought it would be nice to match timbers to the garage doors.

The first pic is the garage door I was thinking of and the second one is the lights. Thanks again so much houssaon for taking the time to color in the siding — that is very kind and helpful.

Yes and yes!

I like the idea of the dark timbers, but too light a base color might make the addition stand out too much.

Thanks houssaon! I am kind of envisioning something like this (still waiting on the renderings from the architect). We are thinking about including the brick in the front and then carrying it a the bottom to the west and north side of the house kind of like in this picture. I realize ours will be slightly different because of the shared roof line, but I am guessing that part on the left side is an addition esp if you look closely at the brick lining the bottom—it is different than the brick for the rest. A creamy color similar to that, maybe a little darker with dark timbers and then dark wood garage doors. Carriage lights. I think something like that shows the addition is new but still “goes” with the house. And I walked around my neighborhood for hours one day (it is a historic neighborhood with homes ranging from the 1890s-1940s), and tudors just can be so unusual sometimes in their original designs with the mixing of siding.

Fabulous example to emulate!

Thank you!

I think it will make a world of difference to have the brick tie in.

Playing around with color, dark gray with bone.

This house is BM Stonington Gray and White Dove trim. I’d want a bigger window over the proposed garage, maybe even a different shape.

Have you considered doing a shed dormer instead of a gable dormer on the addition. I think you have a lot of gables and a shed might be a relief.

A shed dormer would allow for more floor space in that bedroom as well. Good idea houssaon!

Thanks so much ladies! We actually considered a shed dormer — but — we already have 2 shed dormers, and this new addition will be extending a shed dormer so we liked the gable better when thinking over all about the house. We were kind of worried about it looking like mountains, but when we compared a few different drawings, everyone we asked liked the gable. And we do plan on cutting down that overgrown shrub that is blocking the view of the porch and getting rid of ivy — just haven’t yet until we knew exactly what kind of renovations we would be doing.:)

Here is what the architect came up with as a rendering. I am thinking a creamier shade of stucco panel. And I know that one panel on the right looks kind of funny, but we are planning on putting a porch there so it will not look as bad when it’s there I am thinking. I am going to ask her to do a rendition with phassink’s porch but appreciate any feedback! You have all been so wonderful!

I really like how the garage doors match the trim color! Glad to be of help!

Thanks! I also like the wider gable on the addition, and my father in law also commented how that looks better!

Make sure you include the porch in your plans. Don't need to build it now, but it needs to be integrated into the design. What you show above is not.

The end of the house with the porch and bricked gable looks good. I'd try for something similar on this face. That gable looks much steeper than the one on the rendering too.

Is there room to pull the garage forward? The porch could then hit the side of the garage.

Your image with the false timbering and light colors makes the garage stand out -- probably not what you intended.

Thanks so much PPF for filling that in with another shade. I will check on moving it forward — there might be a little room. I did ask her to incorporate the porch for the future and try some different colorings for the siding.

You might have easement issues with moving the garage forward. BUT…the fact that your existing porch seems to be built forward might be an indication of how far your garage addition can be built towards your street. As PPF indicates, above, pulling the garage forward would enable your new porch to be bracketed by your garage wall when built. A nice look!

My husband and I both like the garage jutting out and thought about it so that our house doesn’t look so long and framing the porch. I think the big problem we will run into is the slope of the driveway. The grade of the driveway is currently going to be around 8%. If we decrease the length of the driveway by 3 feet (the ‘run’), we will very likely go over 10% for the slope, which we do not want to do. But I do agree that this is a great idea!! Boy was I naive when we first started thinking about this addition — there are so many things to consider! :)

Erika, I wanted you to see some English Tudor style homes along with an explanation of what that means. If you like the dark and light combination, then do it. Proper landscaping can soften any hard line in the architecture. My daughter just added some very deco inspired trellises to the front of her federal home. It looked great, and in just a few short years the trellis will disappear behind the lovely clematis that is growing there.

http://andrew-mytwocents.blogspot.com/2016/02/im-all-about-tudor-style-houses.html

Thanks so much phassink! I am trying to learn more about the architecture of my old neighborhood :) so this is very helpful. I have a BA in Art History but didn’t learn much about the architecture in the US. Here is another rendering the architect came up with. I do like the lighter stucco panels with the timbers. I just think it is the easiest way for us to make the new addition “go” with the time period as best we can, and I did not like how monotone the house was previously.

• Your achitect did such a good job of making that addition look like a part of your home. The larger expanse of brick on the face of the garage is an enhancement rather than an afterthought! The porch really helps hide the odd placement of the windows in that part of the house. The wider garage door will make moving cars in and out so much easier. This is a big improvement over the first rendering!

phassink's ideas · More Info

This is my doublewide cedar over steel garage door. It came unfinished, and I stained it to go with my craftsman style home.

Thanks phassink! I agree. I think is much better and am pretty satisfied! We told her with the steepness of the grade, we wanted a single garage door just in case. And yes, the porch helps so much with odd windows. Then the steps leading up are such a huge improvement. I don’t think I gave pictures of this but the steps leading up to our house right now are awful. They are very narrow. And then there is a weird half step right before entering the house that several people have fallen over and my mother in law sprained her ankle when she fell on it. Love your garage and the little stone feature on the side!

I think the big problem we will run into is the slope of the driveway.

I still don't understand why you are resisting dropping the garage down. You said above "We also do not have room to set the garage down because the second floor is a 1.5 story."

Not sure how having a 1.5 story above the garage changes things.

The porch is fantastic! It makes the entry the center of the house. Are you getting brick from the demolition or new?

PPF we did drop the garage down almost 4 ft from where it was in the original drawings. The slope would have been 20% and garage not useable (I have private thoughts about this, but this was caught before we started building at least by our contractor and apple-pie-order and you).

I think I misunderstood what was meant earlier about dropping down hence my comment of 1.5 feet story.

If we bump the garage out, I am worried that it will cause the grade to go over 10% because there will be less of a ‘run’. I suppose we could go even lower but that would require excavating and more steps in the garage. We will currently have almost 4 feet of steps so having more would be challenging. It becomes this constant battle of making sure there is enough space in the garage. It is current 24x24 so we will have enough room for steps that go down the side and toward the back of the garage but if we bumped out say 3 feet, then we would need to probably go 3 feet lower or some combination. At least I think I am understanding what you mean by lowering the garage. It was previously going to be even with the first floor of the house and now it is even with the ground if that makes sense.

Thanks Houssaon! I agree! So much more inviting! we are using brick from the demo and mixing in a similar brick. Fingers crossed! The mason thought he could find something similar to mix with.

I wanted to post an “after” here for how the house turned out. We plan to add the porch next year, which I think will help a lot and obviously massive landscaping will need to occur, and we are still cleaning up from the reno. We are also still waiting on our “wood looking garage door”; we currently have a temporary one on that is white. I have to thank everyone who helped a stranger profusely — for all the limitations we faced, i think it looks fantastic! This would not be the final product if not for the help I received here; I am so thankful for those who took the time to post! (and we ended up dumping our architect because of the mistakes that some of you caught on here, and her inability to really respond to them. Luckily we had pretty good contractors who were able to problem solve, and we will use another architect for all other phases of our house.)

Your house is very attractive. Good job!

Your home looks fabulous! You really have done a great job in integrating your addition to the beautiful historic home that you own. Good luck on the next phase…. I can’t wait to see it with the porch and landscaping! Bravo! Now…enjoy it!