Why would you put on vinyl siding and then paint it? If you are set on vinyl, that defeats the purpose of no maintenance. Just throwing out my thoughts....... IF the structure is sound, it doesn't appear there is much inside worth working around so I'd make it a blank slate. In other words, I don't see interesting old casings or a cute kitchen to restore. My inclination would be to make it clean and spare, no curliques. As for the metal roof, I love them and think that would look great on a structure like that but not in blue. I also wouldn't do blue siding (or paint) but I'm not a blue house person.

Let's take my illustrations less literally. And we'll all be happier. :-) Where I use "purple-y" plants is to illustrate a plant of substantial difference from the main shrubs below a window. It could be a perennial. Or it could be a spreading shrub. Or just about anything in between and of any color. Where I used red to flank the porch, that is any kind of seasonal color or arrangement. I'm not trying to limit your choices. A main feature of my design is a limitation of shrubs. Therefore, there are "leftover" spaces and these can be filled with annuals, perennials, subshrubs, low spreading "shrubs," bulbs, etc. ... using, of course, some kind of sensible repetition and balance. But all the details would be up to the person putting all their fine tuning on my schemes. What I'm hoping people don't do is: a line of shrubs marching across the entire front ... delete trees where needed or have them too close to the house .... make beds too shallow ... and those kinds of things. I'm not crazy about annuals in pots if there is the option to place them in the ground because it's more maintenance of potentially in the way (visually or physically) of the entrance. (Just don't squeeze them in too close to the walk.) In the case here, I don't think the larger window warrants two shrubs, and that one shrub could easily get to the right size. If the same species is used, keeping them sized to the window would boil down to trimming. Or different types of shrubs that are similar (green) but of slightly different sizes, could be used. It's pretty much impossible to tell a shrub to be a specific size and expect it to comply. Trimming is the control. I might be shaping and subdividing the bed along these lines. (Something at the back of the bed would be taller than what's at the fore.) Hopefully, your walk will be at least 4' wide.

Agree you should at least try to wash the roof. if you're not ready/able to replace it. Personally prefer to keep a storm door but you could paint it grout gray to make it less dominant. You could paint the downspout grout gray, too. You could drastically trim the shrubs and then relocate them to your back or side property boundary, thus clearing space to add a 6' deep flat roof porch across the entire front of the house ... except for putting a small forward facing gable only over the entry door. A concrete floor would be a plus for your porch. Use sturdy square porch posts painted grout gray and spaced to not block the view of/from the windows or front door. If a porch isn't in your budget, at least trim the shrubs to be level and below window sill height . Painting the garage the same gray as the grout between the brick would make it less dominant visually.

Hi All, So I've now been in our new lake house fixer upper for about a month. I've already provided photos in previous posts. I've really appreciated all your comments, ideas and support. We will be having a new roof (really have to do that immediately for insurance purposes). The exterior of the house will be cleaned up and updated with gray shingles and siding with white trim. (The front gate and arborway have been removed.) The roof will be a darker Landmark Pro pewter. (It's a multidimensional-looking dark gray.) I need to figure out what to do about the chimneys especially the bluish one before the roof is started. The texture looks awful to me. How do you think I should handle that? Wish I could go back to the original chimney, but it doesn't seems as if we can. Just paint it? If so, what color? Whites in FL on the lake kind of get a fungus on it so that could end up looking dirty. Should it be painted gray to blend in with the roof? Ideas about the texture? Should both chimneys match??? Thanks so much. PS: Thus far, the huge conservatory has been taken down. It would have been a fortune to air condition, and its roof partially blocked the lake view. What a stressful ordeal that was (50K lbs of stone and cement), but now we are waiting for sod to put in its place. We were hoping to put in a pool in its place but with supply and demand issues that won't happen for quite awhile. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!! Linda