I'm not a fan of the shake, but perhaps this might be a color you like?

What a charming house!

Something in the greige or cream realm would work, but a couple of caveats: If you go greige, you need to make sure it has enough warmth to tie in with the gutters and trim; if you go cream you need make sure it's not too warm against the stone. A soft sage green might look nice here, too.

Whatever the top color is, it should ideally be as dark as or lighter than the lower half. Otherwise, the home will visually appear top heavy.

That limits your choices to off whites.

What about something like this? Not a specific paint color (as of yet), but kinda pulled a tone from the sidewalk/stone around my house.

Or this

Or siding over the stucco…

The last stucco color rendering is gorgeous!!

Do you know if the stucco has been painted before? If not, you may want to avoid painting— stucco in its original form is breathable and essentially a lifetime of no maintenance (which painting will somewhat negate). If not already painted, you could have a skim coat of stucco (in a different color) applied over the top.

If it has been painted already, ie you see flaking paint in different places, then there’s no worries in re-painting, just use a quality paint that’s good for stucco applications.

I would vote for keeping the stucco—it’s in good shape, historically appropriate, and with all of your stonework on the lower level, I think introducing siding above will make the house look too busy. I like both of the colors you used in your mockup pictures.

The color of the siding in your most recent pic is getting close to the correct needed to compliment your stone. I'd like to see what stucco looks like in this same color.

I also think the brown trim is throwing things a bit. Do you have budget to paint the trim too? Blue-black would look nice against your stone.

Another vote to not put siding over the stucco.

If there is not yet elastometric paint on there, another vote to not add paint. A color cote of stucco can be applied.

The brown trim doesn't bother me. Just don't paint it white.

If you go with stucco, I think you just nailed the color. It makes your whole home look bigger, more cohesive between top and bottom, less choppy. It also really highlights the historic features. Nice.

I don't even mind the brown trim as much now. But I wish the wood on the porch railings and lattice in front and the steps in the back were the same color as the trim. Can you photoshop that so we can see what it looks like?

I too would say no to the siding - the horizontal lines, the dissimilar materials only amplify the disconnect between top and bottom. Stucco and brick just "go together" better, both being natural masonry materials.

If this is original non painted stucco, you might want to look into mineral paint aka potassium silicate paint which besides being more durable, breathable and appropriate for historic masonry, have a beauty and richness to the colors that modern plastic acrylic paints dont have, due to the mineral pigments that are used. This type of paint is commonly used in Europe, but not so much here. US sources include Keim, Romabio, Limeworks.us, and Beeck. The last two Ive dealt with re my own 110 yr old concrete house - have fantastic customer service, and have really nice pre-mixed "stone" colors plus can do custom match to any color.

I kind of like this. I matched the color of the grout between the stone…

Do you guys think the stain on the front porch should be dark brown like the trim?

Could also do the back porch in a brown…

Looks good. Everything is unified, and no longer a hodgepodge.

Yeah, definitely the limestone color for the stucco works well and agree that pulling together all the wood elements and makign the same color helps further to unify everything. I might switch out the dark brown for a softer, grayer version of dark brown at some point, maybe when repainting needs to be done. But certainly thats nothing necessary or urgent!

Im curious, is that stone original to the house, is it solid stone or veneer? Its just kind of unusual for that era - in my neck of the woods anyway!

It’s solid stone. It’s like a fortress lol. There are actually 3 almost identical houses to the left and right of me. It’s an interesting house; the basement ceiling is almost 14ft tall.

14’?!? What the what? I was wondering why that walkout door from the basement looked off (seemed lower than it should be). Any idea why it was built this way?

Yes to the paint color and all wood matching the trim. Very cohesive and more historic looking.

The last photos are the winner.

The basement sounds intriguing- 14’ ceilings?!

Photos of the basement. It's like a warehouse down there

Thank you for the guidance everyone! I think this is what I'm going to go with. I'll probably leave the back porch red for now (since I just stained it last year). At least it matches my front door color.

Your plan looks great!

And I’m sooooo perplexed by your 14’ basement ceilings, which seems even stranger given the era your home was built. There had to be some reason for this— do the neighboring ‘house twins’ you referenced have basements like this too?

I’ve heard that it had something to do with the bedrock. I guess they had to dig really deep to reach it? The porch in the back actually is actually level with my first floor, so the land in front of my house is a little higher up than the back.

Awesome house! Love the changes. But please remove the poor dead potted plant from the pillar at the front door and don’t put anything else up there. OK, maybe a gargoyle but not a plant. 🙂

Since you got a plan for the exterior now, seems like a good time to make plans for that basement. Idea 1: real life movie theater with stadium seating. Idea 2: indoor sport court for basketball, pickleball, racquetball, etc.!

To refresh the look of your very cute house, I would simply paint the stucco as well as the trim in 2 tones of taupe, a light and darker one for contrast. The softer colours would be nice with the colour of your stone. I would stain the cement steps on the front porch to match the colour of the walkway, they don't seem to match in your photos. You can do more detail around the upper windows widening the frames, and replace the awning with a black metals one. Inquire about the proper paint to use on the stucco.