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.

Steel, vinyl, LP Lap, Hardiplank?

I think I would like to split up the wall creating a top border at least 18" left as is. Then I'd like a reddish warmer color to the lower portion of the wall of bricks. (usual standard red brick color). I think it needs to be broken up with contrast colors. It will ground the home and bring some life to the neutrals. This will break up the height covering so much of the lower half of the home. Or..maybe BETTER yet.... .. remove 12" H in rows of brick, off the top and replace with a 'deeper depth' wood facing (compared to brick depth) .... to create a band of color above the lower brick. Maybe match the wood facing with the vinyl beige or a contrast color for the wood trim added ..... to create a larger space above the brick. Lower brick in a natural red brick color. The windows will not feel so cramped above the brick top edge if you match the beige vinyl color.. I think it will fool the eye. This will give you a needed dimension to a rather flat facade of the home. Adds some architecture and a visual interest.

I wanted to select a light stain like the shutters below, but they don't exactly work with your brick, so I selected a stain light than your current one with white trim.