Start with good designer that has construction experience. Once a concept is developed, then an architect can do specific drawings for a builder to implement. By using designer first, you will make sure to keep the integrity of the home design-wise but creatively achieve your goals.

btw, if you post some photos here, we can get you started with ideas, inspiration photos, etc. Go to the "search" photos here on Houzz and see what pictures appeal to you. That helps communicate your desires quite well and will help you define what you want. Bottom line: budget will be biggest challenge!

Start with the bank for the personal loan that it will take to finance a 100K endeavor that includes rebuilding the entire roof and adding an addition. You won’t get a construction loan for that. It won’t add any value to the home at all.

If you want to spend that 100K, and have it just floating around in cash, start with an architect. Or buy a different house.

its a classic style of house, which is expensive to tart up wrong, much less right. do your homework. click through 30,000 photos of split entry/ raised ranch houses and find some you like better than yours. drive around and see what neighbors have done with their similar houses. but mostly keep your hand on your wallet because really your house doesnt need fixing.

and no fair picking out photos of porticos etc on houses that arent split entries. it has to work on your house, and if its a good idea someone else will already have had the good idea and you'll find some photos.

Thanks guys, yup renovating the inside was a real eye opener in terms of cost. I will be keeping the purse strings as tight as possible on the exterior. However the roof is about 2 years ago from being needed to be done so I’m getting the ducks in a row now so when I ask for some changes to the roof shape it’s not going to be cataclysmic occurrence for my husband to deal with.

Time to sell and do something else then. You’re annoying the pig with the attempts at lipstick. You have to accept it for what it IS. Not what it is not.

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I'm in awe of that mountain though...Is this Pacific Northwest?

if this is the first wrong house you've bought, i bought two before i really understood foyers and garages & etc. we buy what we can afford and generally at the beginning that ends up being things not as perfect as we'd like.

you might decide to save your money and move sooner than you would have thought. the garage will not get bigger, nor the foyer larger. sorry for the bad news.

(the first wrong house i bought was also a split entry. we moved 3 months later... unexpected relocation. the second was a colonial that we fixed by showering cash on it. it ended up nice but wow that was pricey.)

Hamma..Sure is. Sea to sky.

Ningret, it’s true, I’m trying desperately to rein in my Imagination in regards to what it could be, House prices where I live in Vancouver is ridiculous and is buying again is pretty much never going to happen in the next 10 years for us. So I’ve promised my husband I’m not expecting a overnight result and very slowly be making our changes, when we can afford it. I will focus on the large garden and use my landscaping skills to make that my magic area :)

Adding a gable or gables to the roof will not make the house look better and as you said there isn't enough room to expand the garage. The only thing that makes sense to look into is a portico. You could add a flat roof or a shed roof.

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It's gorgeous! Such a magical place you've got there...And what a view! Enjoy it. My little piece of advice would be not to rush, live there for a while and then figure things out.

Vancouver? Double that to 200K.

Beautiful place. How long have you lived there? Do you need an enclosed entry to deal with cold weather and blowing snow?

Yes the door opens directly onto the stairs so there is quite literally nowhere to put a jacket, shoes etc. So I need to bring it out a few feet, We brought it two years ago and I haven’t lived in it yet, we rent it out. Will move there in a year or two. Looking forward to it.

Thanks for info. Next time you visit the tenants, measure how much the roof sticks out. That's a comfortable, compatible distance for a portico to match. If it is not enough, you may get more of an airlock type of appearance for an added entryway. Armchair drive around with google streetview to see if there are similar neighborhood houses where there's been an entry added.

Renovating the interior first, then the exterior is not the most efficient way to go. It should have been done at the same time. Make some cosmetic changes to the exterior--paint, landscaping--and save your money for the inevitable issues (breakdown of furnace, leaky roof, insect infestations, etc.) you will have to deal with in the near future!

Yup very true, we were renting it out and it was in a dismal state of affairs inside, so we ended up having to work on the inside first fixing furnaces, painting the neon paint inside, flooring, moving illegal duct work just to get it to a livable state. Luckily our tenant is a builder and had been great with doing a bunch of little jobs for us. Would much preferred to of done the outside shape first but our bank account hit the bottom, far too fast.