In terms of the addition of usable square footage, it's difficult to say. What I can tell you is that we are gaining an 8x8 bathroom on one end of the upstairs "hall" and a walk-in closet on the other end, and neither of those was possible before. We are actually raising the entire roof on that side of the house in addition to the dormers so we are also eliminating the knee wall in the bedrooms. I anticipate we'll gain quite a bit of usable space there as well. The scope of the project is pretty vast. In a nutshell we are taking the roof off the east side of the house and raising it, adding in the shed dormers, adding windows in the bedrooms in the shed dormer, adding the bathroom (which I would say is medium to upscale in terms of finishes as we're doing tile and a frameless glass shower), reshingling the entire roof, adding the deck and pergola and adding a sliding door to access the deck. The estimates we received ranged from $50,000 to $130,000. Once we got a little deeper into the inner workings of how our house is put together and what we need to do in terms of structure, it looks like we'll end up spending in the range of $85K. (Ick ... I've not typed that number before. That makes it a bit too real for my tastes). We also live in an area that seems to be on the higher end in terms of building expenses and I have no idea why. The roof, for instance, is not going to be anything special (30-year asphalt shingles) and accounts for about $18,000 of the budget. This is a project that started out of necessity. Existing dormers (you can see one peeking out in the existing house photo) were installed improperly and never insulated properly. After having insulation and roofing experts come out, we determined that the only way to really FIX the problem (which involves shoveling the roof when it snows, going up on a ladder to break up ice dams every time its done snowing and occasional leaking) was to remove the dormers all together. Of course we also needed to reshingle the roof. And as long as we're doing that .... and well, you know how it goes. Sort of takes on a life of its own.

Original capes didn't have dormers so there are few useful historic precedents regarding shutters on dormer windows. "Doghouse" dormers were common on historic Tidewater South homes with a similar shape but the second floor extended over a front porch (unlike Capes) They usually had shutters that sometimes extended beyond the sides of the narrow dormers.

Thank you, Mark. I got a few early thoughts from the build team after they visited the house on Monday. Based on that I have tweaked my plans a bit. As budget is a big factor we can't totally rebuild the house ( if I could go back in time and buy this lot with nothing I would!) we have to choose what will make it work for us. For example the kitchen is 9x11 but has newer cabinets in good shape so redoing it will be a no. It will work best to have a center dormer of about 12' wide. We are also changing the deck along the river side which will affect the facade a bit so the architect is mulling that over. a quick draw on my iPad app, sorry not a great app for this. The revised layout, gives me a corner window option over tub.

This might sound odd, but do you see the blank space to the right of the central window on the first floor? In that area, to balance out the door’s awkward location on the left, place a large custom trellis, perhaps out of stained wood or cast aluminum and plant a vine upon it. I think that by placing something to balance the door, even to measuring the exact width and location of the door relative to the dormer above it, you will create symmetry with the dormer. You can create symmetry out of asymmetry by fooling the eye. I suggest a large grid shaped trellis, probably the width of two of your casement windows, and set to the height of the windows, too, that emulates the window patterns. Then, as all here suggest, foundation plantings to fill out your beds and add texture and life to the front of your home. Perhaps, too, symmetrical trees planted in your front yard that would bracket the dormer when viewed from the street. Can anyone create this with photoshop?