leave the bricks and roof alone for now and start with cleaning and repainting the driveway and roller doors (a dark grey?) and all the cream to white and change the side gate to a straight line instead of the rounded slats and then repost the new look for suggestions of the next stage

Have you considered Ragging/Bagging the bricks and painting, this keeps the character of the bricks a bit like a Rammed Earth finish with bricks, I agree with you about not wanting to render the bricks, Try cleaning the driveway and then a new photo showing what you have already done so we can work with that

It’s a tricky one @oklouise. The stencilled concrete wraps around the left hand side of the house where it becomes our entertainment area so while the driveway would look great dark and was my initial plan, it would mean the entire thing would have to be dark as their are no breaks in the concrete and as a house that was lets say unsympathetically designed for the block, having the paving dark in our entertainment area would make the whole space too dark. Definitely need to do something with that bloody gate! Might see if hubby can cut the metal to make it straight.

Hi @siriuskey. Such a good idea and was my initial plan but the bricks and mortar joins are quite flat so not sure if bagging would give it more character or just look like a bad DIY render job 😂. Might have to consult with a pro to see what they think because I do really love that look. Will definitely post pics soon of the updated front area. We’re just finishing up a few things which we tried to get done with trades in December (rookie mistake) but even 1/2 done it’s looking 100x better

Just a quick thought re OKL idea, you can cut concrete, so if you picked a good place to cut visually, you could lay a row or two of bricks using jointing cement in the cut out section, a pebble look also set in cement would work.. Because the bricks and joints are flat it would look even better Bagged/Ragged, you can even buy paint finishes with a similar effect to try.