Wow you received lots of responses. Without reading all the posts, my first thoughts are: Remove existing walkway and make a new one that is 4 feet wide, flares at both ends and is 4 to 5' from the house. You need a deciduous med size tree on the left side of your house to soften the hard lines of the house cornor and to visually off-set where your house ends. A large tree in the back of your house will help balance the scale between the size of your home and the never ending sky, I am a big fan of plantings that are viewed from the inside of the home. I can't be sure from the photos how much room you have so my ideas might be way off. Pictures tend to make spaces seem bigger then what it really feels like when standing in the site. So forgive me if my ideas prove to be totally of base. These are just some of my design principals. I do not think you should put taller shrubs under the window, it will only create a bulky look. Try small low groundcover 12inches, evergreen, and carry the bed to the other side of the walk so you are walking between a sea of green, maybe long blooming clematis w/trellis on wall if exposure is apropriate or something like an Enkianthus which is an upright growing decideous shrub with great follage and a growth habit that can be prunned and kept natural and airy and NOT sheared into a ball or square thus making your house look more boxy. Good luck. Remember that works of art take time so rather then you budget controlling the final results, let the best design do the controlling a little at a time. Ally

By variety, so I can get a log going on yield and flavor, the best flavor so far was scintilla, oneal, and misty, bountiful blue has yielded the most but flavor is just ok and they have noticeably larger seeds. This is just my first full year with blueberries, the key for me has been selecting varieties that have low chill hours needed, keeping soil ph low and shading south and west in summer, first season I fertilized with ammonium sulfate at 1 tsp per gallon of water, per plant each week with supplemental watering in between as needed to gain size quickly, and have backed off to every two weeks this season. So far so good.

As I look more closely at the pics, and compare them to the ones in gramarows' link, I think maybe this is the plan, with the foyer built out over the lower level. It looks as if there is a curtain on the far end of the small bedroom, so maybe the area under the foyer is open on one side, for storage. I think the larger downstairs bedroom must have originally been a garage, or at least is was designed to be converted to a garage, with the carriage doors and driveway. Maybe it has gone through several transformations--single home with garage and interior stairs-->duplex with converted garage, and stairs removed-->back to single family home. The box with the X in the larger downstairs bedroom appears to be a stacked laundry, so no cool ladder--I guess there is a closet after all.

I wouldn't bother w/foam boards. she's painting, regardless, and she's going to have to prime that green. it's easier to grab a few samples and paint it on the stucco then walking around w/a board propped up against the house . get a gray primer for your samples. After you decide on your gray color, take your gray primer back and have them tint it a shade or two lighter than the color you want. you'll use less paint have a better finish. make sure they use paint suitable for stucco. if you think you want a lighter color, get a white primer to cover a portion of that green and paint on your light sample. if you just paint over that green, you'll get a false sense of what the color really looks like.