Looking at the photo of the front of your home, I can see why a nice porch would add a new front to the home and increase it's curb appeal. No doubt an AIA would be helpful, but just for ideas I'd suggest bringing a porch out flush with the garage front wall and stretched accross to the left end of the house. Now in order to do this, you would loose the PW above the entry doors. I don't see any other way. Besides, I don't like that PW. It's out of proportion with the home's front. It's too big. Imagine the break line between the first and second floor continuing right across the front of the house, from left to right. Right over the removed PW. Now you have a place to build a shed roof just below the twin D/H windows on the second floor and a full porch below. If you can visualize this... The Porch Guy Here is a link that might be useful: My Album

this is a 5 minute edit. will be glad to spend a half hour or so on it if you need proper colors, lighting, making sure all is straight and level, etc. just tell me what you want it to look like (trim colors, wider columns, etc.) Just let me know -Mickey

Don't give up, mahlgold! If you look at the boxed out lower windows, the trim on the sides and bottom of the windows is stepped back from the upper piece - there's a name for that piece and it escapes me at the moment - anyway, it creates a very nice shadow line. That's really key - shadow lines are wonderful at adding depth and interest. As for the shutters, if you have more substantial trim, properly placed shutters would sit so that they are at the window edge, basically covering most of the side trim - and I can hear you saying 'then why add the trim???' Because it will show a bit from certain angles and the look it creates is not something you can fudge. If it's not there the shutters would be sitting flat on the house (as they are now) not angled back a bit. In an ideal world the shutter size would be so that if they were closed, they would meet in the middle of the window. In the real world, we can't always do that, but we get as close as possible and let the eye imagery do the rest. If you get reasonably close to half window width, it will look fine. I think a black door would look wonderful with Fairview Taupe or any of the earthy historic colors. However.....with your recessed door you might lose some of the detail and it might look like a hole. I love your brass handset - maybe consider a larger, more important looking door knocker as another way to brighten a black door. And if your handset is the forever brass that doesn't tarnish, make sure your door knocker is the same.

We are doing a portico on our ranch too. Since we are now replacing the roof shingles, I asked our roof contractor and he is building it. It is called a california framing. For the style of the portico I looked at pictures on line. He then made a drawing and took pictures of the front. In our town it requires permits. So he provided the drawings and pictures and we were approved. It is 3K for the portico additional, but I think is very reasonable, it will be 7’ X 7’. Tomorrow they will dig the holes for the columns. I hope this info helps.