It sounds like budget will keep most things from happening, but at least you can have goals and get to what you can. Trimming of trees is a lot easier/less costly if one keeps up with it and ANTICIPATES what's to come. 1.) A branch that's 10" in diameter is hard, time consuming and troublesome to cut. That same branch was once only 1" in diameter and could have been removed in about 10 seconds. 2.) As branches grow longer and thicker they hang down further. So branches that are only 4 or 5' off of a roof now, will be resting on it in a year or two. 3.)There's a store of energy in a tree that is in relative balance between foliage and roots. When the roots contain a surplus of energy relative to the foliage, the foliage will have a growth spurt. (For example, if one cut off all the foliage, the tree would have a major growth spurt. I'm not suggesting do this.) However, the growth spurt will most likely not to be channeled into what was cut... but in what remains. Therefore, A tree can be shaped much better, faster, and more efficiently (less waste of the stored energy) if it is pruned judiciously right along from babyhood. The wrong way is to let it get too out of bounds in places and ways it shouldn't, and then try to fix it long after it was needed. I understand that you are using the maple tree to solve a problem, but it looks like a case of using a hammer to kill mosquitoes. Why not consider some sort of screen close to, and wrapping the corner of the lot that will obscure traffic? It could possibly be combined with fencing that was mentioned earlier. I'm thinking along the lines of lattice or some kind of grill work with wines growing on it or some such thing. There's lots of possibilities. Just a thought. Hopefully, you don't want to grow the globe arborvitae as two separate balls. The house does not seem to be asking for any. I'd move the right-most globe leftward, as shown, to at least give these hope of growing together. The Euonymus coloratus is the shaggy reddish plant. I'd move it over to the Maple and start making groundcover out of it. I've marked up one of your pictures to suggest a bed line. And to show where you should have pruned the Maple.

We've had three sets of neighbors in the house to our immediate west: 1. the good ones, who were never home, ever. 2. the challenging ones, who came into my yard and started chopping off my tree limbs while balancing their ladder on my garden area, because they didn't want birds pooping on their cars, they said, preferring to let the sun beat down on them at over 100 degrees outside the cars and heaven knows how hot inside; but they couldn't use their garage because they were using it as a kennel, and they didn't want to walk the 60' up from the street. 3. my very nice current neighbors, who wish I would cut down the very old oaks because of the little reproductive strings (don't know right name) in the spring and acorns in the fall, but are sympathetic to my view that no, we shouldn't cut down fully mature trees that shade both homes just for the minor annoyance two weeks a year. They wish the trees were gone, but they're not going to push me, or sneak over for a surprise trimming. Sorry for the rant! I was just trying to say you have my sympathy!

Sallymo, thanks for the link to the pictures. That helps me decide. I am trying to add height to the room and not cover much of the window. I don't think I mentioned that this is in my dining room. There are two 2.5 X 7' windows that are about 3' apart. I like my drapery panels and like the bare window look. I mounted the panels so that they only cover the window frame on the side but none of the glass. If we are dining at night I feel the need for a little more privacy. I plan to make the shades so length won't be a problem. I would include a picture but I'm painting that room and the drapes are not up.

I'd do inside mount. If I could, I would make the center window into 3 separate but abutting shades. I would have them capable of dropping to the floor, even if that meant that when you lowered the shades, you had to pull them out a bit to clear the lower window frame. Of course this doesn't mean you have to lower them that far, but you should have the capability. The wider the shades are, the more expensive and the heavier to lift, plus it puts more strains on the strings and makes them more likely to break. So going narrower has its benefits.