If your aluminum siding is only discolored, why spend the money to replace it, just paint it. A good powerwash and good exterior paint (SW "duralon" (sp?) did a great job on mine, and from other houses I've seen will last for years.
Color is your choice. My painter used a sprayer because I couldn't DIY it because I'm afraid to go up so high (almost 4 stories in back). Your house looks like a DIY project-think about it.

How about a grayish color that matches the mortar between the bricks?

You have a pretty house!

i'd pick a beige/reddish neutral a that blends with the brick, keep the wood trim white or a creme white, add black shutters at least to the front 4 windows and paint the door red.

I always wanted a garage where I could put a weather vane on top - that would look neat!

Jaysmom - We painted the front siding when we first bought our house and it got us by for many years. The siding on the north and east sides (not shown in pics above) is in very bad shape. Considering we are doing a rear extension and would like all to match, we decided its time to replace the siding. Also, house is not insullated, so this will give us an opportunity to add a house wrap and other insullation.

Graywings - Our first choice is a grey. The Hardie Board grey is very light, called light mist, but it might be just enough color to give a bit of contrast to the white trim.

Froofycat - I was thinking of black shutters and my DH would love a red door. Not sure how a red door would look with the brick. I thought beige siding was more modern look and I want to keep the traditional look. Hmm... a weather vane. I think you are right, it would be a nice touch. We are flipping the slope of the garage roof to a pitch similiar to the house. Do you think it would still look nice? I'll google some images. Thanks.

I vote for light gray too. Subtle & classy, works well with the mortar, and won't overwhelm your lovely little jewel of a home.

this color scheme is nice with brick:

I think even with more reddish brick it'd still work

The Light Mist is too blue of a gray to work well with your red brick. You need something warmer like the Cobble Stone or Monterrey Taupe. Gray wouldn't be my first choice though. Woodland Cream will contrast with the white trim, yet it is a warm color that will work well with your warm colored brick. If you're feeling more adventerous, the Chestnut Brown or Harris Cream would both work.

I like Cobblestone better than Light Mist with your brick, window trim and roof.

Cobblestone (approximately)

Light mist (approximately)

I think the cobblestone looks better too. I think the darker colors would work better on this house.

Wow Suero, how did you change the color like that?

I will also be changing the roof, so it won't be such a faded grey

I like the cobblestone too - very warm and looks wonderful with the brick. I would not put shutters on the windows, particularly not on the second floor windows because you do not have room put the correct size shutters there. Shutters should be sized to look like they actually could cover the windows. I don't think your house needs them in any case. I would spend the cash on upgrading the walkway to your house and the landscaping.
Diane

The grey looks good in Foofy"s picture because it matches the roof color. It you are going to do them both,then I vote for the grey.
I have the classic white siding and brick, but I can see you want a change.

re changing roof, good because the current one doesn't work with Cobblestone (in case you prefer Cobblestone over Grey Mist). Grey & beige don't play well together, IMO.

I still prefer the grey. There's something about Cobblestone that isn't right to my eye: too heavy, too bland, too Home Depot-ish, I don't know what exactly. It just doesn't sing on that house.

I'll let the others chime in for color... but what a super cute house, love it!!

Once upon a time we had shutters and I liked them,

but if you look closely, you can see the wood is deteriorating even in this picture.

I think the cobblestone is a bit pink. For style of the house and the brick, a "weathered wood" color similar to natural weathered shingles, might look good.

Here is a link that might be useful: house with weathered shingles and brick

i'd go for charcoal grey, almost black shingles.

OMG, those were real shutters!. Hung the right way! I hope you kept the hardware, it's worth big $$ now. If you put shutters on again, the hardware really makes them pop. I'm leaning towards the cobblestone but since I'm not there IRL, it's tough, it may be too pink. The gray looks nice.

I also think the light mist is actually BLUE, not gray, and doesn't do a thing for your Cape Cod styling, brick, trim, etc. Blue is a very country color---it looks perfect on some houses but not a classic brick/siding Cape like yours. IMO, of course :)

I also like the taupe color, although the colors in the palette appear completely different than the color that appears on the picture of the house (on the same website).

My choice would be either a darker gray or taupe, (medium colors), and to keep your trim a very crisp white, with black shutters and door. If you put the shutters back up, that is. You also might consider just putting the shutters up on the first floor windows, to balance the dormers you have up top.

I also think a small cupola with a weathervane on your garage is a brilliant idea!

Just jumping in to say I think that shutters look really nice on your house....gives it soul and adds to its personality. With shutters you might even have to give it a name. :)

I used to live in a neighborhood full of capes built around 1950 and lots of us had to re-do our front steps because they were crumbling and we re-did our walkways. We all went for new looks, kinda like this:

{{!gwi}}

We had a mason who was able to keep the steps for the most part and just do refacing and new treads. DH and I actually did an entire side walkway and back patio in pavers ourselves. It wasn't that hard, but not sure I'd want to do it again.

My experience with Hardie Board siding has not been good. My house was built in 1996, and the siding is cracked throughout - where it was nailed in place.
I haven't had anyone look at it yet to see what can be done about it.
It looks like there was class-action lawsuit against them but I was too late by the time I noticed it...
Just FYI!

I don't like the cobblestone at all. Too much chance of it looking pink, which will NOT go with your house at all. Reminds me of a house we looked at to buy yesterday - it had red/orange brick with stone trim. It also had some small amounts of siding that was painted a taupe-y shade that looked awful with the brick. I think they were going for a match for their stone trim, but it just looked bad.

Hmmm, most of the colours read very pink for me which clashes with your orange brick. I would go with a black roof and very dark siding. I'm thinking either the timber bark or iron grey.

I love the shutters. They seem to balance the top of the house. If you went with the dark siding, you could do white shutters which would help to connect the white window frames from top to bottom.

We went to look at homes in our area where this siding was used and we have narrowed it down to Light mist or Cobblestone. The other colors seem too contemporary for us.

The Cobblestone is much lighter and softer IRL than is shown in suero's pic above. The light mist is lighter than I wanted, but is a nice soft tone.

Froofycat - I like your steps. We plan to redo ours after we recoup from this kitchen renovation.

Priscilla_ca - Sounds like a bad experience with Hardie. I looked up the problems with Hardie and it seems to be based on the kind they used to make. Not sure though, I will investigate more. Thanks for letting me know.

Very nice home. Our home is a cape, I've always loved the capes. I think your siding color choice is going to depend on what color you choose for your roof. I would pic my roof color first, and then the siding color so that all of the color choices work together.

The pic of the house when it had shutters really looks great. If you still have the shutters and hardware stowed someplace, I would repaint the shuters and put them back. They do add to the appearance as most traditional capes have shutters. Fortunately, yours are the correct size, with a bit of paint, you're good to go.

Red door - YES, but needs to be the right red for your brick. Also, you could do a black door.

Please post "after" pictures when you've completed the work.

I have Hardie Plank and work with color every day, so this is a subject near and dear! I am going to be honest and tell you that I just don't love the Hardie colors. Have you considered painting? There is probably a cost savings in getting the boards paint-ready which will offset the cost of the labor and materials. You'd get to choose your own color and do right by your lovely house.

When you re-do the roof, go darker and stick with gray!! No brown, okay? :-)

The white surround of the molding and storm door makes your door look like it is floating -I'd paint the storm door trim black to give the doorway some definition.

This is a pic of the front of our house - with dark green, almost black shutters and red door.

Amysrq - I was thinking of going with the light mist and eventually having it painted a bit darker. I thought starting with a color would buy me some time to post pone the painting. What do you think of this? My renovations are already pushed to the max of our budget.

Cattknap - great color scheme and landscaping.

Love the gray and your plan of going darker at some point in the future. The gray is soft and goes well. Black shutters and burgundy red door, dark roof. You have a gorgeous home as does cattknap!

Dilly, I would certainly look at the cost differential between the two paths...better to have complete information before making a decision. What if it only costs slightly more to use your own color...?

My experience is that people often live with their "interim solutions" for a lot longer than they expect. Sometimes this is okay, other times they are living with something they really don't like for years.

I would hate to see you pick a color you don't love to save some money and be miserable in the meantime. You're putting a lot into this renovation. I say do everything you can to get it right the first time around if you can. :-)

The one permanent part of the whole equation is the warm burgundy red brick. It won't change, even if you change everything else. And the blue color of the Grey Mist is way too cool of a contrast with the warm brick. It's pretty dreadful, actually. If you must choose a grey, the darker Monterrey Taupe would be a much better choice as it has the right undertones to work with the brick instead of against it. The other warm color choices to consider would be one of the creams. I don't think any of the browns are right. And when you do the roofing, you do not want a true black or gray, you want an extremely dark brown that reads black or gra. Something like the popular "espresso" furniture color. That little hint of red-brown will keep the whole first impression cozy and warm.

I'd check the price of the painted vs. the primed. We built about 4 yrs. ago, and if I remember correctly, the painted was considerably more. We wanted our own color and got the primed Hardiplank.

Thanks so much for all the feedback. I appreciate all the considerations of our design scheme.

What do you think of this type of bumped out doorway for part of phase 2 renovation (in a few years) new front door, stoop, construction, probably $10k easily.

Our front hall is very tiny and this would greatly improve flow. Just an idea.... a someday idea.

We used cement board siding on our garage 2 years ago (however not Hardie). We were told that the company would custom match any SW paint color. We elected to get the primed siding and paint ourselves, but you might want to check into that as well. The main part of our home is a very orangey brick, so our final colors were green for the main color on the garage and house additions and then rust and straw as trim colors. We still need to complete the trim painting.
{{gwi:686094}}
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Oh my, they ripped off my siding and now I just have tyvek paper over the original wood. We'll have a whole new look by the end of the month. Stay tuned....

Very exciting!!

oh wow we're under contract with a very similar house but it's stone that turns into vinyl siding instead of brick!

any idea why the exterior changes to a different material like that? are you planning to remove/replace the siding? we don't like how disjointed ours looks!