Tess, I hope I'm not too late with the following advice. Don't ever paint brick. Your house is a simple design, exterior wise. Paint wont fix it. What's missing is a designed garden. Even the simplest brick house can look like an inviting, lived in home when it has a structured garden surrounding it. For less than the price of paint, invest in a landscaper to design a garden that will soften and greatly enhance your homes street appeal ...and add many $ in value. Painted brick detracts from value and has to be repainted periodically, defeating the purpose of brick, which is, no maintenance. Besides, your house, painted white or cream as has been suggested here, would stand out in the street like a proverbial sore thumb. Trust me, landscape, starting at the street boundary and leave the bricks alone. Good luck.

Thanks Orangecamera. It's still a work in progress and mud everywhere Sorry we did look at having the steps' off set' but it didn't seem to go with only three steps and a small area. And about the zen well the cats are doing that for us much to our disappointment (it's still like a litter box to them). We went to the garden supply place still not knowing what kind of stones we were getting. We stood in front of all the bins (there where many). We even looked at mixing some. The grey stones had a bin more the size we wanted but we ended up getting the golden fleck. It was a little smaller, which was a shame, the bigger ones were so mixed in their grading it looked too messy. So this is what we finished up with. It was seagardens that got me thinking away from grey and nwduck mentioning the drainage. So this has really helped. Also everyone seem to think the wooden steps needed to go a lot lower. Next it's figuring out where the large river stones should go

We have black widows rampant... it takes literally inspecting the wood and having a whisk broom handy to de-bug it before putting it in the canvas sling carrier and bringing it in. I've had to go to splitting my wood up a bit thinner to fire my RMH, that has helped too. Neighbor across chunks up and sells firewood, I can get the smaller diameter stuff he can't normally sell very cheaply off him now to fire with; and he has a splitter and has run some of my old 3/4 cord for me. One sling of wood lasts a good 4x of what it used to, so storing inside isn't nearly the issue it used to be.

I don't see the point, just like T.V. How long do you really spend in there anyway. Maybe once in a blue moon it would be nice but really? To be perfectly honest I don't understand the fascination with the huge bathrooms that need hours to clean, I would rather save that square footage and use it for something I would actually need like a bigger walk-in closet for instance. I live in MCM house we have 3 bathrooms all small and I love them. They are easy to clean look great and what we have are nice big rooms that actually function well.