Rosie, I will always stand by subway tiles. Fads may come and go, but subway tiles are always there. They are a reminder of my college days in NYC riding the subway. And of my great Chicago apartment that had them floor to almost ceiling in the bathroom, original from the 1920s, with a beautiful crackle. Figuring out a style for our kitchen and bath that is original to the house is a bit of a fun trick because our house originally had neither. It had an outhouse (long gone though some neighbors still have them as tool shed relics in the back yard). And it has what is known in these parts as a shed kitchen, which is just what it sounds like, a shelter in the yard that existed prior to indoor plumbing and electric. Over the years the shed kitchens were built on to and eventually enclosed, and in our case another floor and roof deck added on top. All of this balanced on the shed kitchen - what had been a rather campground like, picnic type shelter. In digging in to the kitchen floor to run pipes for a bathroom that we were going to put in the back stairwell, we discovered that the whole kitchen, and all the rooms above it, were balanced on two crumbling brick piers, and that the ground below was many, many feet deep of coal ash. In excavation, bottles, newspapers, and kids' messages were found dating from the 1930s. Who knows what version of our kitchen was built when. All of that is a long way to say, no real kitchen style seems authentic to our house necessarily. Our area has no Arts and Crafts references or architecture. Victorian and Italianate is more the style. I like to think of butlers pantries, nothing too flashy, wood, marble, stainless maybe. For our bathroom, we put in a salvage console sink with glass legs from the 1930s. It is quite handsome and seems to blend in to the hodge podge. Our hope is to cobble together a kitchen that seems to blend in to the rest of the house too. The one that is there now just feels very out of place with the old fire places, staircase, molding in the rest of the house. We don't need/want historically accurate, just more of an old time vibe.

Where are you located? How cold does it typically get in winter? Glazed ceramic pots, typically Vietnamese in origin, are often considered to be "frost proof" and will withstand below freezing temperatures well but there is a limit :-)) I have a large collection of frost proof glazed ceramic containers that have withstood many winters unimpaired, including a few dips down into the low teens. But they are not inexpensive and they are also heavy - and very heavy once filled :-)) Today's resin and fiberglass containers are much more stylish and up-to-date looking than the standard (cheap) round, plastic flowerpot shapes found at common outlets like HD, Lowes or Walmart - see link. But they are also not inexpensive but are pretty much impervious to any cold damage.

If the siding is in good shape just repaint. New windows will take half your budget but could offer energy savings and sound proofing.The Craftsman trim could be fitted to the old windows or new ones. Landscaping would be the best upgrade. You need at least 4 evergreen shrubs to line the foundation and some flowers for colorsto repeat on the door.

Thank you Yardvaark and Revolutionary Gardens for the feedback! So I went to the supplier and found out the product is black basalt 24"x36" x 3/4" thick, thermal face and sawn edges...not manufactured stone as I had previously thought. Yes I used the big wet sploot method Revolutionary Gardens mentions, and did not use a mold but sculpted up edges of the concrete around the sides of the stones to retain them as best I could. The mixture was roughly 1 part cement/5 parts sand/5 parts water but I was mostly eyeballing it to get the consistency I thought I needed. The small cracks I believe are actually not cracks but a function of the natural stone having veins that are visible when wet, as I havent sealed the stone yet and its absorbing water. My next task is to clean off the dried cement stains from the top face of each stone and will be applying Aqua Mix enhancer (I realize now I should have used some kind of sealant beforehand to make easier work of cleaning off the cement residue....). I also bought a replacement stone at $72 to replace the one that cracked through, and will use the cracked one to test how the enhancer affects the stone before using on the others...good times! Thanks again for the input