Okay, let's see if I can catch up on all of your helpful posts! I met with a landscaper and we were pretty much on the same page but there were a few things that I didn�t agree with. Maybe I just have no clue what I'm doing and maybe his recommendations are truly better than the picture I have in my head! I'll be meeting with another designer on Monday to get his take on it. The first guy was free and we just talked about what the plan would be. The second guy charges $50, but will draw up a whole design. They also do driveways, which the first company does not do. The one thing that I really didn't like about the first guy was that I felt like I had seen all of his ideas in my neighborhood already. I don't want something crazy that doesn't fit the house or neighborhood, but I also don't want the same thing everyone else has. How do you get your house to stand out from the others but still "fit"? Just because everyone else has "x" number of garden beds and "x" amount of front yard grass doesn't mean I have to, right? I did read over our HOA docs and they simply state that no more than 20% of the yard can be raised garden beds or container gardens. I would really like to make maintaining the lawn easier and to shade the front a little more. He wasn't on board with that. As I said before our yard is quite short, only 25 ft deep from the sidewalk to the front brick. So that will definitely play a big part in the design. The front tree is a cherry tree (with fruit) and I have been told that it will grow large enough to provide cover for the front window, not too sure about the door. Every arborist and landscaper that I have talked to seem happy with that tree and tell me not to touch it. The shutters have actually done quite well with all of the sun and heat that they get exposed too. No warping or anything. Considering the roof color is a good point. I think the wrought iron color would look great. I still don�t know what I want to do with the door. I have been playing with pictures of the house for days now. I've cut and pasted so many different designs I'm stuck. I think that there are some styles and looks that definitely work, some that definitely don't work, and then there are the in-between ones. I don't mind having my house look a little different then the neighborhood. I have two tri-levels on each side of me and three true 2 story colonials across the street from me. From my mock-ups I think can get away with some different looks that neither of the other two styles could pull off. And that is why I'm stuck. Too many ideas. I think a designers eye is what I need. The other challenge I am having right now is prioritizing what to do with the house first. The inside still needs to be painted. I could use some new furniture too. If I did do painting I would want to update the lighting while the ceilings are getting a fresh coat. As far as the outside goes, we obviously need landscaping. But we could also use new gutters and soffits, possibly a new door, and new hardscaping. My husband would also like to close in the carport. There is just so much to do and I don't know where to start. The changes we have already made to the inside were easy because they were done out of necessity. Really none of these other things have to be done. I think that I would like to focus on the outside simply because I have a 4yr old and 1yr old that make it a little harder to maintain the inside versus the outside. And I can handle the inside myself. I obviously need professional help with the exterior. So, any ideas on how to prioritize my projects?

Budget and building codes permitting, you could recreate your entry. You might ... Remove the first floor roof from above the front stoop -- everything from the brick to the garage. Create a new forward facing gable roof over that area beginning at the ridge of the upstairs -- at least at that height or even above it -- and extending the roof of that forward facing gable to a point at least twelve feet in front of the downstairs exterior wall. About six feet of this will be your new front entry foyer with your front door moved to the new exterior wall facing the road. The rest will be your new front porch. Alternately, you could extend the forward facing gable roof only six or eight feet beyond the front exterior of your home to create your new entry foyer and then add a shed roof with two hip corners for your new front porch. You'll be enlarging the upstairs room on the left by extending the floor of that upstairs room into the vaulted ceiling space above your new porch; then you can move the original window to that new upstairs exterior wall of your forward facing gable. What front door and front porch post style you use will help define/redefine you home. You could also add an arbor across your garage that coordinates with the posts you use for your new porch.

As mentioned, by nature of the architecture, there are few places to put plants against the house at this front face. The overhang plus the lower windows does not invite foundation planting at that area. A large planter could go in front of the wall just right of the large window set. A shrub at left of the left house corner could help establish a better setting so one's view doesn't run directly off the house to what's across the street. (Maybe there are some plantings at the left side of house that can help with this, too.) Other than that, some large, circular beds around the two major trees could help give some fullness to the overall look and a sense of the patio space being more protected from the public space. The height of that groundcover could be as much as 3'+ to as little as 8", with the taller giving a more protected look. There is some opportunity for colorful seasonal blooming depending on what plants you use. My suggestions are for layout and arrangement. Plants have to be chosen from what works well in your locale. I got rid of the tall evergreen left of the door. It seems overwhelming to the porch/entrance space, IMO. To clean up the overall picture more, I'd get rid of large-tree foliage that hangs low enough to shroud the roof. This might mean hanging limbs/branches, or removing some lower branches entirely. (It is apparent at the tree at the left that some branches should have been removed way back when the tree was young ... before these turned into a major part of the trunk system and are not hard to remove without removing a lot of canopy with them.) The grass looks pretty healthy in spite of the shade. It's hard to tell if there is enough hill to warrant complaints by the grass-cutter. If it's tolerable, I'd leave as grass. Later though, since there are more trees on the way, shade could become too much and warrant conversion of those areas to groundcover. I like the house colors and think they are well suited so wouldn't change anything there.

Would not paint brick. If you want it darker, then you might consider staining it, keeping the grout visible (or painting it gray grout color after staining is complete). Perhaps you could add your screened porch on the back -- perhaps even wrapping it around the side of the house for more area. You could move all those plants, etc., to the side yard and then build at least an open front porch centered between the two downstairs windows (preferably with a concrete floor and at least 6' - 8' deep), keeping the barely sloped shed roof you add on each side of the existing roof beneath that smaller upstairs window. Do use the same roofing material all the way across -- perhaps metal roofing. When get your porch in place, then you could address the sidewalk and landscaping.