We are a design firm and are doing many renovation designs, for ideas you can have a look at our renovation photo galery (over 100 homes before/after):
http://www.drummondhouseplans.com/renovation-search-result.html
This can provide you with good and trendy ideas!
Good luck!
Marie-France

Thank you for the link. I'm not looking to enlarge the house, but your redesigns are great! I'm sure your clients are happy with their updates.

I'm looking for much less work than you do. Thanks anyway!

No but before you meet your builder, you need to make sure you know what you want, otherwise it will cost you a fortune. Have a look at some of the project we did, that will give you an idea of exactly what you want to do... Good luck aebj! And send pictures when it is finalized!

You're right about the shutters, paint them. My first house was sided in that color, yuck! If you don't have a paint sprayer, buy or rent one. If dark navy floats your boat, go for it, but I think charcoal would be better

We also recently replaced those exact storm doors with all glass, small change, big difference. Considering that you have 2 doors on the front of your house, brick and beige siding, I'd paint them to match the shutters. That's enough going on. I'd also lose the trellis and move the planters. It's not clear which door is the "front" door. Maybe use 2 of the planters to define the true front door with some colorful annuals.

The shrubs are in need of some help. If you want to keep them, I think you need to buy more to fill in the gaps or if they're not full grown, maybe they'll fill in.

The posts are unfortunate, as it appears they are not in front of the main door, the lights don't really go. Maybe down the road you could do away them if you don't like them. Think recip saw! Every diyer needs one.

The carport. Hmm. Paint it to match the siding on the house, put some shutters on the window matching the ones on the house. A planter box would be nice too. Wonderful picnic area.

Despite my suggestions of what needs to change, I think your house has great bones, minor flaws and just needs some cosmetics. Have fun and don't sweat the small stuff.

Michele1975: Thanks! Isn't that color awful?! I'm not really into green. I don't know what they were thinking with the green and the posts. Maybe the original owners realized they didn't have a light outside that door and it was all they could think of. I think glass storm doors would help immensely. The trellis is history!

I have a spray painter. I've never painted shutters. I'll have to do some research on how to do that.

Do you think it would help if the lights on the posts were painted black?

I don't know if that siding can be painted. Dunno why they didn't just stay with the brick. It looks like that room was originally a garage, but it never was. They built it to look like that.

Yeah, the red carport has to change too.