Thank you PPF! I really appreciate your modification to our rendering and see that the roof does look fine without the dormer. I am a bit confused by your suggestion to move the right gable to the right side wall. There is a double garage on the right side of the house, so not sure if/how this would work, but would love to hear more if you can elaborate.

Yes, we were planning on a combo white brick and B/B. Do you think that is too busy and we should just pick one? Not sure we can budget to cover the entire house in brick, and I think B/B only looks good in small amounts as an accent. So maybe fall back to all traditional horizontal siding? What do you suggest?

The shed dormer looks nice but why not create a volume ceiling in the front room to actually enjoy it? The other ones could just become large ‘vents’. That’s what my 1913 bungalow had.

I don't think the house needs them, I like what PPF has drawn.

Either eliminate the costly fakery, or take advantage of the actual available space, and stick frame the attic, so it can be good storage, and be available to a future purchaser for additional living space. Then your decorations can be real, and have purpose.

Retirement home, modest, Wisconsin, snow = Simple Roof Plan. Not 8 and counting roof changes, a lot of valleys & other shaded nooks for snow to pile up. Simple roof is a less expensive roof.

All of those roof changes cost you extra to build, complicate & increase the cost of installing guttering and increases the cost of roof replacement in the future. The more complex the roof is, the fewer options that a future owner has to be able to expand the size of the house.

You want people to focus on your door, not the dormer, so just get rid of it. When the house is landscaped, no one is going to be staring at the roof, with the possible exception of a house that is down quite a slope from the street.

Consider how a farmhouse may have evolved over time. Today we tend to build everything at the same time, including the giant 2 or 3 car garage connected to the house. People once designed with natural light and ventilation as priorities, today, not so much.

Your house might have started out like this.

Then a detached garage was added, set back from the house because it's a garage and not part of the house.

And finally a connector, maybe a laundry room was added between the two structures.

The garage remains clearly subordinate to the house.

As for moving the gable, two reasons. When I look at the house, it's where my eye wants to land, instead of the focus being on the house. I prefer a gable over a garage door so rain and snow are shed to the side and not on the driveway.

Use landscaping to downplay the garage and highlight the house.

If you don't want to see as much roof, lower the pitch over the house -- the gables can remain steeper.

Thank you so much for this. The part about the garage and snow makes particular sense and thank you for explaining so well.

I don't go up there often, but I enjoy having natural light in the attic. I'd make the dormer "real" and frame the attic such that future occupancy of the space would be possible. .