Bahia - I know ... I couldn't find a more appropriate forum and saw a few other simialr questions on this thread. Hope no one is offended. Adrienne - Wow. Great questions. 1. Long term investment. We bought the house last October and we will be here for at least ten years. 2. We live in Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. Winters average 30s and 40s with a few weeks where the low will be in the teens and 20s, and usually not much snow (the winter of 2010 being the major exception when we got more snow than, say, Syracuse). Summers are very hot and humid, though our property has lots of shade thanks to the old growth oak trees. 3. In order maximize the interior ceiling height, the back roof will be rubber which takes less space. We would likely not have gone with a rubber roof which I had a property two houses ago, but it makes sense in order to get several more inches of celiling height. To be honest,I haven't looked at the color options on that style roof so if you have any suggestions, I'm open to them. 4. There are lots of stone variations on this property. The house and stoops are actually the same brick, but an addition put on the late 60s (where you can see the first floor bump out on the back of the house) is a different brick (it's not a terrible match, but our main house brick has lots of pits and character and the addition brick is much smoother). The driveway retaining wall in a third brick. The sidewalk retaining wall in stone and matches the sidewalk retaining wall on the whole street. Our front walk is Pennsylvania flagstone, as is our new back patio. The terrace retaining wall and the rear property line retaining wall are Nicolock in Colonial 3 and 6, crab orchard blend. 5. As these are the 1939 original windows, we ordered new ones (they will be in this week!), but they are also white. The eavestroughing will remain white, I think, since I'm not sure paint would adhere to it ... but to be honest I haven't given it any thought until now. The shutter are paintable ... and I'd also consider replacing them with a different style. Most of the capes in our neighborhood have board and batten shutters. Curious to know if others think they are more appropriate for the house. The front walk and stoop , behind the hedge, is in good shape. The previous owners did a nice job with a small flagstone patio. We'd consider sprucing it up, but we'd like to explore adding a small front porch in the future so we probably wouldn't want to do too much there. On the other hand, I would take out the front landscape bed and re-do that with something more striking. Our area is full of lovely hydrangeas ... and we have none. At the very least I would love some taller shrubbery since the white foundation of our house (including the painted first row of brick, argh!) is not attractive. 7. Previous response includes some of my landscape plans. The tall oak which gives us so much shade, the holly tree and the grafted dogwood tree (one trunk is pink and the other is white!) are the only things I am married to in the landscape. We get very little direct sun in the front yard so our grass is somehwhat patchy. In the back yard we've removed tons of junky, unhealthy, croooked trees and all the turf so we need to start from scratch. We'll get a least one fairly mature tree since there's nothing back there now and that will add instant appeal. I'm hitting the nursery next weekend for ground cover for the sides of the house, sod for the upper terrace level, shrubs and trees. This being the landscaping forum I will take any and all advice on that as well. Hopefully I have answered your questions. Thanks for taking the time to read them.

I took the test too :) It said I was "autumn tan"...which was funny since it's what I'm trying to remove! Haha. I made two more variations on a theme... From Apr 5, 2011 From Apr 5, 2011 I'm still a little torn but hopefully a decision will be made soon! Gayle, the shutters I've "put" on there are only because they are a style that I can make. There's no way we can afford custom shutters and I don't want to just repaint the louvered ones we have. I want to make them wide enough to look operable. I think skinny shutters look crummy on houses as simple as mine. I figured the board and batten style was something I could make out of cedar myself :) It is a certain style though, I see how not everyone would like it. Shades, I have to say...white typically would be my #1 choice. I love white houses...almost always. Previously I'd always imagined our house going white. Our issues with it are that the white is a little stark against the roof, we'd lose the detail of the pediment etc. and the white shakes don't look quite as realistic as the darker ones...ugh I hate this decision!

Like the landscaping in the mock ups by celerygirl.for if you keep the sidewalk direct from door to road across the front yard. If you do keep it, you might "widen" it a bit by outlining it in pavers that you could also use to outline your planting beds ... with the tops of the pavers ground level for easy mowing. Especially like the shed roof mock up that extends the full width of the cantilevered overhang -- looks good; the gables would interfere with the look of the upstairs (wouldn't do that ... and I'm usually a fan of forward facing gables over front doors., You could even add a hip roof on that right corner and wrap your porch around the side of the house ... perhaps to reach a side or back screened porch. celerygirl has serious skills. Would "like" her work but Houzz has stopped letting me "like" (thumps up) comments.,

I don't know what that ivy is either, but it's gone now! We'll also have the roof fixed and clean. It's a slate roof so I don't think it needs replacement yet, but a cleaning and repairs sorely needed. Can anyone recommend a program or an app where I could play with color options for the shutters, door, deck etc? I am not very good at these things and don't use photoshop but if there is another app I could download I'll learn how to work it! I think that may be the best way for me to visualize things..