cmarlin, re: this being a harsh crowd...I dunno, I think the opinion is mixed at best about front facing garages with most people acknowledging they make sense in a lot of situations. With regards to "cheap" I think that is an assumption and it's related to this style coming to prominence when building quality in general was not at its' best...but it is an assumption. I've seen very well constructed houses built in this style. There is amount of custom building going on in the Building a Home forum in this style. But with regards to "hodge-podge"...I don't know, is there a better or kinder word to describe massing like this? It's not restrained, it's not particularly well-balanced or proportioned. It's just not. If you look at the work of Victorian architects like Frank Furness and Wilson Ayre, who dabbled in the baroque/grotesque and must have been creating stuff that was intentionally ugly on some level, they designed without restraint but there always seemed to be an underlying rhythm and balance to the design. You've seen the design process for houses like the above. Start in the middle and add rooms as needed and if there is 30 corners on the perimeter, so be it and figure out the roof at the end. Seriously, it's "put this here and put that there". And I disagree that builders build this because that's what the consumer really wants. Okay, some consumers wanted this at the beginning. It was a high end sort of style at the beginning. But then builders started borrowing the elements for the most basic sort of house. The house came first. What's the evidence for this opinion? Look at other design. Did consumers in the 1950s start welding tailfins on their cars spontaneously and the auto industry took notice? No, the fin was there first. Maybe seven to ten years ago, aqua and brown were a color combination. Did people go to their weaver and say "I want a fabric woven in aqua and brown, thanks" No, some group of designers and marketers got together and this combination was presented to the general public. And for a lot of people who have no set particular taste, but will go by the trends see this color combination and think "Somebody better at design than I am came up with this combination, so it must be good. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me." If you have been around design forums long enough you can see this happening. Many many people had pink in their interiors in the 1980s and 1990s. In the 2008s suddenly it wasn't pink anymore, it was ugly flesh tone, it was "bandaid" it was "hot dog vomit". Since 2016 it's been reappearing as "Blush" and it's suddenly not so bad anymore, because "Somebody better at design than I am came up with this color, so it must be good". And it's the same with these houses. Somebody wanted this at the beginning. Builders took off with it and started building it, and people bought it because that's what was being built and then people started seeing it and thinking, "well other people seem to want this and like it, so it must be good" or, like I said before, they buy it because that's whats available.

I would call your house Cottage Style. There has been an attempt to make it appear Victorian with the added bric a brac on the porch, and perhaps slightly Colonial with the divided door lights. None of which is 1930s. It’s very cute though!

It appears to me to be a hybrid of sorts as well. It's definitely not a four square. They look like this and are very distinctive in their style. This is a colonial revival. If anything, I would call it a raised ranch hybrid, even though you're not climbing outside entrance stairs to get to the main floor. What is it you're wanting to do to the outside? I think the house would be pretty with a pergola all the way across and wider steps at the doorway with posts spread out a bit further to make the entrance feel more welcoming.

I would describe it as a farmhouse or as a worker's cottage. My area has a significant number of bungalows which usually have a hip roof and a dormer over the front porch, not a gable end. The use of the description Cape Cod style here refers to a house with a center entry and the door opening on the long side. I am not an expert, just giving the descriptions typically used in my area for those styles. I hope your cute house is just as charming on the inside!