We have a house in the family we are considering that has the same weird front door on the side arrangement and garage door in front (city lot, no other place for a garage) and our plan if we redo the house is a garage door that blends with the house and then spruce up the front and the walkway to the front as much as possible. (We are wondering even about putting some kind of porch over the front door so that there is some front-facing structure that can say ‘hello, front door here!’ but we haven’t quite decided what form that would take yet.) Otherwise people see the garage door and get confused about a lack of front door.

Where do the doors go - into which rooms? Was perhaps the side facing the driveway meant to be the "front," entering into your front room/living room? Sometimes they placed houses in a way that might have made sense at the time, but don't anymore - or rural areas the house sometimes faces driveway instead since no one would be approaching from the front. I would not be spending money on adding on dormers and other stuff not original to the era of the house. Sorry, like it or not, its not a colonial or cape house.... but it does in fact have a charm or character of its own. Sometimes with an old house, less is more. Be careful you don't ADD to the visual clutter already there, and instead, you want to strip OFF the extraneous gack that is creating visual clutter - like the 2 extra porches on the driveway side! LOL - its like you have the orginal sunporch, then another porch was added on to that, then the third porch (with stairs) onto that! Do any pics exist of your house in the past? I wonder if there wasn't a porch on the side facing the street, with the roof attaching to the wall in that blank space above the door/windows and below the eaves. Rather than dormers, spend your money an open porch - need not span the whole length of the house, in fact it might look best just putting it on the right side over door + 2 windows to the right. Duplicate exactly the pitch and style of the other porch roof. I would make it an open porch, then your landscaping- flowering shrubs and ornamentsals in front of porch with inviting walkway from the street.

We're by the ocean in Los Angeles.. just a 1950's ranch house with thick original cedar beveled clapboard siding that we'll be painting dark. Dark framed windows. So I too am trying to find the balance of wood and cement/stucco. We'll probably be putting in a wood stained garage door (or wood look if I can find one that can pass for wood). I love the wood under your eaves. What about having part of your garage be wood? There is nothing I love the look of more than wood...but the maintenance is a killer. One thing to think about also is how the sun hits it... the sun will bleach the wood, make the finish deteriorate faster. So if you have a more protected entry area or maybe northing facing side....maybe that would require a little less maintence?

@lisedv Would you be able to tell me how you created the rendering of my beach home? I love the idea of a white house with our light blue front door and would really like to see it with some natural/stained wood elements (California Coastal)…We’d like to replace the glass block window with a window of the same size with some type of privacy glass (perhaps framed with a light stained wood trim). And I like the idea of a wood planter box with beach grass or a similar low maintenance plant (probably 24” wide or so and fairly tall (32” or so) to the right of the front door. If we did something like this, would you also recommend trimming the front door in natural wood to match the window trim and planter box, or would you leave the trim white? And lastly, I love the idea of resurfacing the driveway, but I don’t think pavers would be approved by our HOA (no other units have them). Perhaps an epoxy or granite stone coating?