Those ideas are great / what a difference already. We were thinking of ranch sliders/ bi folds right along the front and taking out the triangular windows at the top as they are off set and filling that in with lineaboard painted a copper colour, and adding a more extensive deck. Thinking of taupe/grey paint on the roughcast at the bottom and lighter lineaboard or of the same taupe/grey at the top. Copper colours on the garage door, on the linea joins on the top half and around the soffits. What about the garage door being a block design e.g 5 x 4 block type look?Then it would match the entrance door. and covering in the windows at the bottom ( that's all garage underneath and is well lit with lights inside ). the outside light looks cool - maybe in copper? are you able to produce that for us, we would love to see if the concept works. Thank you.

I'd like to suggest that the most important thing here is more about who is using the room. If It's a child's bedroom use lovely children's curtains - there's so much around and any pattern could pick up the wall and floor colours. If a guest room and not used often I'd suggest a beautiful velvet or good quality Linen and forbid the little ones from going in to that room!!!!!! alternately a blind attached at floor level could be raised or lowered so the view is still there but with privacy from waist height perhaps. Good luck. Bee

With any post war house built in the 50's the connection from in to out is non existent. Depending on where living rooms are located i would take some of the fantastic windows out and replace them with French doors, or bi folding doors and connect the house to the site. The colour scheme from Karen is perfect to lift the kerb appeal and give it a modern twist. With land costing more than houses these days and the fact that you seem to have quite a big block, after looking at paint colours, opening up the living dining kitchen areas to the outside with a roofed area. Even combining a flat roofed carport which will widen the house to the street making it seem a bigger house, can carry the new look with say an enclosed section for garden equipment, to the opposite side to the house, and if you are lucky enough to have that near the living area it can be used as both car cover and outdoor living. I always think a good landscape architect is worth their weight in gold, to give you a landscape plan, to suit the soil type, your skills level and your preference in planting. Divide up the exterior space to provide outdoor rooms under a tree, paths that lead to some special spot for kids, maybe even a veggie patch with a chock run, and make sure that you use the entire yard, front and back by enclosing part of the front yard in fencing which suits the style of the house, while providing some planting to the street. If allowed a gate structure to blend in with the house, a dedicated pathway with planting each side to the front door, fantastic fencing and consider natural materials like a hand laid stone fence with timber or powder-coated aluminium inserts, to give this house an entry, not sure where the front door is now, so that is not a good look. Gardens always enhance a house, they are never a wasted effort, and if you are not gardeners, make sure the landscape architect knows that and he will be able to select low maintenance plants. All the paint in the world will not give the desired effort that the garden will do to that paint work.

Hi V Lyon. I'm a novice at this myself so I don't have any real comments except that what you're looking at doing seems nice. But I did want to ask is what program you used to do your proposed makeover? Was it just Photoshop? Or something else? I'm keen to try this on our 1970s house to get a feel for how it might look...