bodica, Very good advice. It is hard to remember to pause and enjoy the experience. I assume we will never do this again. This is supposed to the the "forever" house. :) Days when we make a lot of progress, we are on cloud nine. Days when we don't it hits us hard, but, we will get there and I know it will all be worth it. Analogous to having a baby... sdionnemoore, I love talking to people who are at the same point as us. I really love the SW Blonde strip and all the colors on it. Please post pictures as your paint goes up! I'd love to see them. Humble gold will be the main color in our house, but there are a lot of different colors as well. Here is a link to our blog if you are at all interested in seeing some of them. Good luck with your painting also! Jaymie

Wow everyone, thanks for the input and the compliments, we are at that stage where we are just tired of remodeling, even though we are in the home stretch, so it's really nice to have positive feedback! Suero and Justgotabme, I really am liking the idea of the pergola it's something I hadn't really considered before. Thanks Suero for trying the cedar shakes on the gable ends, I'm sure it didn't do much since it just accentuates the low slung roofline and that's something we'd like to down play. Oceanna I completely understand what you are saying about painting. We do have a really good painter who has done work for us for years and is very reasonable so I could ask him what he would charge. Scoobyruby I hadn't thought about natural wood like cedar, I may have to think about that one, if we don't choose to paint the brick it could be really complimentary to the tones of the brick, but less cottage like I would guess. Socks and Megsy it's good to know that we don't *have* to paint the brick since it appears that people on here don't hate it, which is great. I do think better landscaping and shutters would go a long way in making things look better. I had to laugh at the white shutter/white sock analogy, we think they look like white socks too! :-) Kitchenkelly, I have long admired your kitchen and your photos of your backyard so your compliment really made me smile! One of the best parts of my job as a writer is that I've been privileged to write about some amazing homes, both large and small so I've been filing away ideas for a long time now. My husband loves my job and hates it all at the same time. I do a lot of designer and renovation homes so I come home and say things like "hey we can take that wall down!" When he gives me the "no we can't" look, I simply say, sure we can I've seen it done! I'm amazed each time I do a renovation story, I've found over the years that most of the time it's the homeowners with the vision. Few, if any, of the homes I've covered used high powered design or architectural firms to create their dream homes, most of them, like me, have just had a picture in their heads that they are lucky enough to make into a reality! I'm not knocking either designers or architects, if my MIL hadn't had either she would still be trying to make decisions and with their help she and my FIL have a lovely home! And like it has been said before, good architectural plans can often save you money and give you a more sound structure in the end. My husband has been playing around all day with Photoshop Elements to try and color the house, we just need to figure out how to import BM or SW paint colors, so far all he's been able to apply are crayola primary colors lol! Kat :)

A few more ideas: I think if you continue the banding along the top it would do loads to help unify the addition with the brick house. Don't use the same fancy molding, just a plain band to go with the simpler style of the addition. Yes to a pediment/eave over the window. It would "cap" it and give it presence. Use beefier trim on the sides of the window so it looks like the trim is supporting the pediment and to make the window/trim/pediment look like a whole. More substantial trim around the garage and on the corner of the addition. Splurge for a pretty garage door and pretty lamps. I didn't care for the window box. It didn't look like a graceful length to my eye, and the black was distracting. If you still want a window box, paint it white to make it part of the window/trim/pediment element. I also found something odd about the way the siding goes all the way to the concrete (or maybe it just looks that way in the picture). If you had a little foundation showing like over in the brick section, that would also make the addition look connected to the main house. I've drawn in a "foundation." Others had wonderful landscaping ideas, especially about balancing the plants and putting a planter or trellis under the octagonal window.

OK Scott, since you just became the homeowner, I have a change of advice. While it is great that you are focusing on the curb appeal, I suggest you should direct your attention to the heating and building envelope since this will be your first winter in the house. Although it looks like the rehabber did a thorough job, many skip or skimp on the stuff that can't be seen, like aging insulation (or 100 years ago NO insulation), drafty corners, rooms that are burning hot and others that are freezing cold, etc. Save some $$ for resolving this. But I wholeheartedly agree that now is the time to plant a tree or 2, but I will reiterate that unless you are in a Sun State, really good windows remove the need for shade from trees, awnings, etc, and it looks like that work got done already. The trees really are only needed to dress the lot, unless your interior walls were burning hot from afternoon solar exposure. As an aside, I profess to know nothing about early 20th century interior surfacing techniques in Ohio, but I wonder if that heavy stucco was a more modern fast fix to deal with the naturally imperfect walls that come with building technologies of the time. IOW, I personally would look into whether that stucco should even be there at all.