Ok - I'm back, and hoping to pick your brains once again... While at a thrift store this week I stumbled across a sofa for $75 and am seriously thinking of getting it for our new home. I have it on hold now, but am wanting some opinions as to whether you think it is a style that would look well in our new living room (and what is this style of sofa actually called, BTW?), and if so, what type of chairs, rug and draperies would best go with it? My brother is inheriting almost all of my Mom's living room furniture, so, other than a vintage Indian brass coffee table of hers, I will pretty much have a blank palette to start with in that area. The sofa is in almost pristine condition - just a little piping trim on the lower part coming loose, which I'm sure can be re-glued, and a very, very slight fading on the upper rear part of the back cushions, where the sun reached. I am assuming the good condition of the sofa is due to the fact that it apparently had a slipcover on it at some point - which also is in awesome condition and was included in the price of the sofa. The sofa is a greenish-yellow pattern. Here are a couple of pics of the sofa (please excuse the photo quality and that lump of fabric piled on the sofa, which actually is the extra slipcover.) And although this isn't the actual coffee table I might pair with it, it is practically identical: This post was edited by dianelu on Sat, Jun 29, 13 at 23:33

Agree, there is no need for construction. Paint the gable, columns and garage doors the same gray as the roof. Don't add decoration to the gable. You want to de-emphasize it. Remove the green shutters. Paint the front door and the wood around it black. Remove the overgrown tree and unattractively shaped shrubs between the garage and the front porch. Use landscaping to direct the eye to the front area by adding more attractive evergreen shrubbery in front of the porch and along the front walkway. Add some brighter decor items on your porch to further focus the attention lower down and at the door e.g. bench cushions and a large planter pot in a color that complements the brick e.g. blue. The white paint on your garage doors and gable draws the eye, and you end up looking back and forth between the garage and the gable - it's almost unsettling. It makes your house look ill-proportioned, and it really isn't. For an attractive look you really want people's gaze to be drawn to the front door and keep the focus there.

Hi, great call outs, thank you! Yes, we will be re-doing the driveway, combo of new concrete around the garage entry and connecting over to walkway leading to front door, the driveway itself will be gravel, which will look more country and fit the surrounding better, there is a ton of driveway that winds around back of the house, that much asphalt will create quite a stark look. The paint is starting to chip in some spots so we need to paint anyway, had originally planned to do board and batten or something along those lines for ourselves, but now will just repaint. If we go white, would you keep all trim, garage doors, etc, white? Would the green door look okay with that, maybe I just paint the door as well while I'm at it? Also, totally agree the door doesn't go with the house, it was on my list to replace! Garage doors will be replaced (they're ancient and have never worked since we've moved in), I'm thinking of barn door style carriage to echo shop doors. Currently we have a weed lawn, and not much of one at that. Our lot is a freeway for wildlife that tromps through all day/night long, in particular the deer and turkey wreak havoc on plants as well as mulch (the turkey love to dig!). But some hardy landscaping, particularly close to the house/walkway in contained small areas (due to drought, as apple_pie_order so correctly pointed out) are in the plans as we get closer to listing.

Not black--that's too dark and too harsh. When I look at this house, the first thing I see is the garage doors and then the light colored siding between the windows. The front door is invisible. I would pick a medium dark color from the bricks (or possibly a warm charcoal gray if you want a more "modern" color), and paint the garage doors, siding, and trim with that. Then I would pick a light, bright color for the front door. Then I would invest in landscaping, which you desperately need.