Looking at your street elevation, two things stand out and impact the look from the street, being the open garage area with pillars, and secondly the breeze block surround with open blocks. It looks like this creates an internal courtyard or similar. This element has potential to be your point of difference. I would save cost on render and apply that instead into good quality texture paint. I also suggest a grey colour. For a light grey, surf mist as in the colourbond colour as it will blend into your roof, and allow for future landscapes to really stand out. ( noted as your yard has plenty of plane to spread landscape across.) Mid grey tone, one called urban grey which is like a warm concrete colour, and my choice. And a dark grey in the form of domino by dulux, which is a colored grey, almost a dark navy. I would batten the courtyard block wall, with horizontal timber slats, which will add dimension, shadowing, and contrast against a garden, it also plays on the perspective on the elevation and draws attention to this centre of the house. Timber slats are affordable, easy to install and maintain, and still allow for the ventilation in the blocks to work. The warmth of timber slats can be incorporated into the carport area lining the underside of the roof for some design detail, and possibly in a letterbox construction to. Warm timber tones against the coolness of a grey will look very architectural, and the roof will simply disappear into the horizon as intended.

Lovely area! You have done a great job! Just a thought i would have put decking to one side and only had one side with stone and plants as putting the decking in the middle looks like a runway. Just my opinion. Black stone would look great instead of white. And painting the back bricks would have been better with a darker colour to make timber "pop" like the colour of your fence or black like the posts. Loving your ideas and transformation is fantastic!

I finally managed to attach photos as requested !! What I did last year was to mix one part house paint with 30 parts water and brushed in long dragging strokes to achieved the weather drift wood look 18 months later which about 4 weeks ago, I bought a grey deck paint and watered it down 1 part paint to 3 parts water Thus is the results It covered the grain a bit more

Wow, what a difference, I had no idea just how big the area was from the before photos, but this looks great - clean and easy to maintain as well. I can see in time the plantings will give a nice lushness and softness to the area that will also help visually cool the area in summer as well. I also like the elevated garden - I can assure you this is a real bonus in senior years. Wondering how many of the old crowd are still around, I lost the ability to post photos after a computer update quite some years back and then couldn't make comments either, so I'm thrilled suddenly the site seems to be working for me. I felt I'd been excommunicated. Not long after this post, I up and sold my Sydney house, was totally fed up with the overdevelopment happening and moved to Port Stephens for some quiet country life. Bought a house on a small block of land that wouldn't be too much for me to maintain in my senior years and the back garden faces north so gets sun all day winter and summer - beautiful in winter as it lets the sun in the house on that side too, but almost unliveable in summer. House had been leased all its life so I literally had a blank canvas - after I'd levelled the craters the tenant's dog had created - I needed privacy from neighbours but didn't want a lot of maintenance, including no lawns to mow, so I've used low maintenance shrubs growing to about 2m around the perimeter and 4 crepe myrtles in the centre area for shade to sit under in summer while allowing full sun in winter. Just waiting for everything to grow now, but thanks to Covid and lockdowns, I've had plenty of time to garden. Thanks for the update Rog, I hope everyone is staying safe and well.