We need a picture of your house. The chimney sounds very large and the cedar shakes would be the unnecessary “busy” pattern. However, if your house is very wide, tall, etc., it might be fine. Essentially, I have just asked you to tell me my skirt is the right length without showing you my skirt.

Why woudl you think we did not need a pic of your home? Post it here in a comment DO NOT start another post . This is totally useless to work from.. IMO as few finishes as possible is best .

Sorry.first pic is the siding we’ve already put up. We have a lot more work to do but the second pic is the chimney. And the dormer over the porch will have the shake unless it would be better to go a different route. It looks crazy to me right now so hard for me to share pics for the world to see.

The stone on the base of the pillars of your example looks nice. That could be a good way to go.

New wood door. It was a garage to house conversion. Everything to the right side dormer and down was the garage. So it was a lot of having to work with what we had. The second dormer (over French door) will be built out eventually to be a covered deck on half, open on other half. That dormer I planned to do shake on as well.

Might just be the camera angle, but once the widows are trimmed, how much space do you have for a stove veneer? That might steer you in a specific direction.

I agree that the stone on the pillar base in your example photo would look really nice!

Don't shingle; do clapboard just like the rest of the siding.

What do you think about doing vertical in the same color?

Not sure what you mean by dormer? Are you referring to the gable in the front entry portico? Or over the French door entry? Both will look best with the siding used for the rest of the house. Too many materials create a choppy look.

So the chimney seems to be constructed of concrete block. Why not just stucco over the block?