Just move your plate heigth up a foot or so. You could cut through the roof to install a 2x12 beam on top of the plate. This will put the facia higher than the existing facia. Or you could move the beams in & give yourself a bigger overhang on the porch so the facia meets. Dropping the floor a step is always an option as you mentioned. Al

To help visualize the problem, take a yo-yo or a plumb bob or anything similar and swing it at about three feet and note the frequency at which it swings back and forth. Now hold it at a couple inches and note the frequency. You cannot control the natural speed of these pendulums. So having a swing with different length chains, each side is fighting against each other. The longer side is trying to swing more slowly. A few more experiments with your yo-yo will support what I said above... The slope matters. The less difference in length, the better. The height of the rafters matters. You'll immediately notice a difference between the speeds of five inches and ten inches. The difference between three feet and 3'5" are much more subtle. The last part I'm just using intuition to say that if you're just lazily swaying back and forth you'll notice the out of balance a lot less than if you're wildly swinging.

It’s going to look different on the porch ceiling. Did you test your 50% sample on your ceiling? It’s also going to look different at different times of day, and different times of the year because of the position of the sun and reflection off landscaping. It might be more intense in places where soffit and ceiling reflect against each other. It may turn out that your ceiling looks darker than your door if you use the same color. Once you examine it on the ceiling and in a corner of the ceiling through different times of day, if it is too intense, you can choose a more muted or complimentary shade. It doesn’t have to be simply a whiter shade, maybe a lighter more subtle shade that has some gray in it, in addition to the white. It may produce the feeling of a blue sky on the ceiling with less pigment because of the increased intensity of the shade combined with corner soffits reflecting against the ceiling. I chose a lighter shade of solid stain for my ceiling than the siding, because I didn’t want the porch to feel like a cave. Both shades are medium, though, not light toned because I did not want to use paint on the rough wood.

Thank you for responding. I think my best bet is to pull back on the reins and do nothing until AFTER the building itself is fully painted. I need to see the siding with the Wool Skein, the blue door, and the trim in white. Only then can I make a decision about what will look best on the ceiling. Again, I'm so afraid that the natural wood look will not be right with everything else painted. I should probably admit that I almost never like a stained front door, instead preferring the front door to be painted. I feel that they never seem to "match" their house.