Congratulations on building your new home. Based on our experience here are a few things you should look into: 1) Whether your shed (accessory building) is allowed in your zoning code. 2) The maximum sq ft of the accessory building that is allowed. 3) How far does it need to be setback from your property line. This varies between municipalities. 4) Make sure your Crabapple tree (Malus spp). is going to do well in your plant hardiness zone. http://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/PHZMWeb/ 5) Regarding the shrubs, in our planting designs we try to only specify plants that are native to the state and region, because of reduced irrigation and maintenance needs. In looking at your pictures, we think that the swale should be usable space for recreation and repose. The trees can be located near the deck for privacy purposes; we recommend planting mature trees (large gallon size) because of higher survivability rates. If you are using the Crabapple tree for privacy, take into account that their canopy range is between 10'-25' diameter depending on the species. Also keep in mind that Crabapple is deciduous, which means you may want to consider a mix of deciduous and coniferous (evergreen). Lastly, we think you should cluster your plantings along the edges of the sides of the property (not in front of the swale); this would make your back yard look bigger. Good luck with the improvements and please post pictures when your done! -DR, Landscape Designer

If you give up the wall oven and use a range, you can easily move the fridge into the new section. Then make the area where the fridge was drawn into a snack/coffee center with the MW, and a small sink. It would be perfect for making a quick breakfast or a sandwich. If you don't want to look at the MW from the DR, you could hide it with doors, which is what I did in my vintage style kitchen. Deep drawers below could store small appliances. You could also put a wall oven beside the fridge in the following drawing (as in sena's illustration), with dish drawers below. You would have landing space for both the oven and fridge. I realized that the sink in your inspiration pic is off-center, so I increased the sink to 33", and decreased the trash pull-out to 12". The faucet can be centered with the window, to help disguise the fact that the sink is a few inches off. I have a 33" apron sink and 12" trash. Love both! The sink hides a lot of dirty dishes, and the trash pull-out is sufficient for our family of 5. I keep a large metal trash can in the mudroom, where I empty the kitchen trash as needed, and we compost, so YMMV. The corner by the DW could be voided, or you could have one of the pull-out storage units. You can check deedles' and arlosmom's kitchens for their corner cabinet solutions. Both are vintage style kitchens in older homes, and are two of my favorites. arlosmom's kitchen reveal and link--still makes my heart skip a beat :) deedles' kitchen reveal images--hidden MWs images--corner cabinet pull-outs

Cute house! Capes are one of my favorite styles. Unless you plan on sitting on a porch out front, I'd spend my money on a landscaping plan. If you take a picture of your house to a good nursery, they can help you work up a plan. Some will do it for free if you buy plants from them, some will charge a small fee to come out and help you put together a plan that you can work on over time. You could stain the stairs and railing with a semi-transparent wood stain to something closer to the roof color. I don't care for a storm door since they cover up so much of the front door so I would avoid it if you don't have to have one. If you really want one, do a full lite storm door that's painted the same color as the front door. I tried on some front door colors for you.

Well your garden bed looks a little skinny, you could consider expanding into grass a bit. If you don’t want to do that I’d add some boxwoods to hide the foundation. These are evergreen so would be nice all year. Could drop two dwarf evergreens on the corners to give it some symmetry. In from of your steps landing you could add in a few hydrangeas for color or something that gets about 4 feet tall. I’d imagine there’s a nice room for some smaller flowers in front of the boxwoods. Think creeping phlox something with some color. Should be room for a potted flower combo on your landing. I think that would brighten it up nicely.