More elevations

I'm assuming your front elevation is the one with the garage door?

Also assuming your front door is in the middle, a side entry, where the light fixture is?

I hate to say this, but your front elevation looks like a 1970s colonial house that had a few additions done and they were not done by someone with good design skills to tie them all together seamlessly. The windows sizes are all over the place too ... like dilated pupils upstairs and half closed sleepy eyes downstairs.

If you really are starting in 2 months, then you might be too far along for any real changes. If that is the case, I would try to do something about the windows in the front and then keep all the siding to one material.

Hopefully this helps.
The large window on the upper left side of the front will be changed into three windows. We tried to make some of the windows upstairs larger because there will be a good view from up there. Other than that, I think that a lot of the windows are similar sizes, but they may look like they are different sizes because some of them are sliders and some of them are picture and casement windows. I could consider changing them all to the same type of window…..

Would making the whole thing board and batten look best? Or, I could do all vertical siding, or I’ve considered doing board and batten with only horizontal siding on the Gables. Do any of those ideas sound good?

Plenty of good comments 3 years ago.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6091758/traditional-modern-elevations

What would you say makes your proposed house a "modern farmhouse" ?

I thought the roof style - pitch, porch roof, awnings, etc.

PPF, we changed the floor plan slightly so that there would be room for the piano. Your design looks good, though.

And yes, we did make some changes based on earlier comments. As we are just finishing up, I wondered if the mixed siding that we settled on was best.

Here’s a 3D model - without the current siding plan.

The low sloping roof pitches and the sliding windows do not exude any type of 'farmhouse' to me. I do not consider "modern farmhouse" an architectural style, only a fad that uses black windows and white board and batten siding on any house. Consider a foot off the ceiling height from each story to help increase the roof pitch since it appears your building height restriction is 35 feet. PPF.'s design is an improvement.

We did have steeper pitches but were required to lower the overall height of the house and so lowered the pitches. Is there a style/ siding that would fit this house better?

The fenestration is so haphazard, even on the same plane. The change in siding is being used to accentuate massing changes, but in this case it is adding to the haphazardness your eye sees. Instead, the exterior finish needs to try and unify the elevations. I do not think you have arrived at your inspiration pictures. The couple dozen carriage lights seem to not help either.

Also I'm not sure which grade point is the baseline for 35', but a 10' first floor + 9' second floor = 20', which leaves about 14' for a steeper roof pitch.

The 28 feet height restriction is measured from the natural grade of the land - which varies where the house will be built.

I am thinking about changing all of the siding so that it is the same, and maybe applying for an exception to the county to see if we can change the roof pitch back to the original, steeper pitch.

Verify the definition of "building height". Some jurisdictions define it as the average grade elevation to the average roof height from eave to ridge.

I’m back. I don’t know if anyone will still look at this thread or if I need to start another one. We’re still hoping to start building in the next month (fingers crossed that we will get a permit in the next couple of weeks!).

We changed several of the window types/some of the sizes; we also changed the look of the front door – which I think is a lot better.

We are stuck with these roof pitches.

So, I am back at the question of what kind of exterior materials I should use. I am beginning to wonder if I should go with stucco - like a warm beige color, to simplify the exterior. I think that could look nice with wood posts/eaves, but I really haven’t paid any attention to home exteriors for most of my life, and I’m worried that the exterior materials that I choose may not fit with this style of house (whatever that is 😄). The house will have really nice views of the forested hills, and I really like the interior layout at this point.

I think that it would be nice if the home sort of blended into nature and maybe had some modern mountain/rustic elements - we live in a smallish town (12,000) in the “mountains “ or forested (oaks, redwoods, etc.) hills. Well I would like the home to have some rustic elements, I really don’t want it to look busy - I like a simple look. I don’t care for the white board and batten look. We also have a small, old guest house on the property that has navy (dark) blue horizontal siding. We could always change the paint color on the small house to go with the new house if we needed to.

If anyone has any suggestions for exterior materials that would suit this house and would be simple and yet blended in with nature to some extent, I would love to hear your ideas.

My suggestion from 3 years ago.

Suggest a dark, somewhat monochromatic look. I'd use shake siding everywhere -- maybe the kind with a staggered bottom edge.

The goal is to hide the house within itself.

This design kind of reminds me of a house attributed to Barnard Maybeck.

Thank you both for your responses! Would there be a way to incorporate some wood into your suggestions?

" I'd use shake siding everywhere -- maybe the kind with a staggered bottom edge "

" Would there be a way to incorporate some wood into your suggestions? "

Use wood cedar shakes.

Thank you millworkman. I’ll look into cedar shakes – I don’t know if it would make sense as we live in a high fire area, but that would look really nice!

Could stucco and wood posts look good on this house - just thinking of something more minimalist and more fire wise.

I realize now that Mark Bischak’s comment is saying that the house exterior design really looks bad. I’m posting a rendition that my Architect gave us. Does it seem like this house really will look strange?

Is the main problem that we were required to lower the pitch of the roof - if I put up a huge fight with the county and was able to get the roof pitch changed, would that make the house look good? Does it seem like this house leans towards a particular style?

I appreciate any help that would lead me in the right direction.

I like PPF's suggestion of dark shakes. Since wood is not appropriate for your location, how about Hardie products? They're noncombustible and pest resistant.

https://www.jameshardie.com/product-catalog/exterior-siding-products/hardie-shingle-siding/staggered-edge-panel/statement-collection-colors/?color=mountain-sage

They offer several shades of brown as well as "mountain sage" that might appeal to you.

Thanks!

"Does it seem like this house really will look strange?"

Some people design a house by laying out a floor plan, and then discovering how the massing ends up once a third dimension is applied to a floor plan; the house's appearance is left to happenstance. There is little intent for composition, balance, form, or relation to the environment in which the house sets; there is no 'poetry'. It appears that has happened here.

The function and form of architecture should be designed together.