On window add a black shade, woven bamboo sold at all big box store they are just hung on nails and the put up rod in black and add white panels in each end for a finish look. Palm trees or tall plants are used to fill in bare spots in rooms usually corners. The sofa you picked above is nice, how long is it? Just put one chair on door wall. Not enough room for more. I think you could do a longer 7 ft. Sect.

Got a minute? I offer a few words of advice. You have already run the roof drains into a drywell, bravo. Remove the stepping stone shortcut to the driveway. Move the trashcan to the service area, replace your light fixtures with LIGHT FIXTURES. Set up a small table with two or three chairs in the well of the red brick terrace, your outdoor room, for morning coffee with the neighbors as you work on your design and later work on its implementation. Analysis first, then design. Call "Miss Utility" or whatever you call the agency that will send someone out to mark your underground utilities. Have sidewalk chalk and surveyor's flags handy when they arrive, so you can attempt to prevent them from marking the routes with their spray paint, especially on the pavements. Take a copy of the official engineer's plat of your property, that you recieved when buying the property, and increase it to a usable size on graph paper as a base sheet for the information gathering to follow. On a vellum or tracing paper overlay, add all the improvements not shown on the plat beneath - the utility runs, above and below ground, the site improvements, building additions, edges of plant beds, walls, slopes, steps, trees, basketball posts, pool, tennis court, mark it all, so you can later indicate what to remove from the existing. Be sure to include a north arrow and, outside the property a morning sun and a setting sun, with a curving line indicating its daily path. Ask everyone in the family, and perhaps regular visiting friends to list all that they would personally like to see included in your site development plans - no ideas to be rejected from these wish lists, but only a limited few will be included in the first phase of development. Walk around the neighborhood, around your site, make a tour inside the house of all the window and doorway views, upstairs and down. Indicate on your coversheet those views you wish to block, screen or enhance. You are ready now to draw a schematic plan, upon which to attempt to marry all the existing site information with the initial phase of desired activities of the family and friends. a) On a sheet of vellum or tracing paper, bring through the existing engineer's data, the utility alignments. Make an indication, like the squiggle of a hair-roller where you want to block the view, maybe a note like bad view or block view. In similar fashion, a broad arrow pointing toward a desirable view you wish to maintain. Mark an area offsite that indicates a point from which your house is first seen by arriving guests. b) With a series of appropriate-sized circles, mark where you hope to include various activities. Outdoor family cooking and dining, perhaps a different area for entertaining guests outdoors. Mark where the different sports activities might be appropriate, many of which require only an open level lawn area (or sandy beach). If you have infants or infants of quests, indicate a spot you can monitor from kitchen and office windows. Does the husband want a horse-shoe court, a bocce court, a 3-hole putting green to compete with his guests? Since this is an older home, many of these spaces will be defined, but may not suit your family's needs. Indicate some to be changed in phase one, others to wait a few years while you tackle the front yard enhancements. Take this schematic plan to the copy center and have them make 3 or 4 copies for you. Store the original along with all the info gathered for its preparation in a safe place. The copies are to be kept handy for distribution and for your own use. Talk with the large local garden center to have a landscape designer come out to meet with you for a couple hours while you go over all the specific activities of phase one, which might include regrading, new walls, tree transplanting, pavements, water features, whatever. If you have prepared a list of plants and trees that you would be interested in sharing your home with, now or in the future, copy that for the designer as well. Do not prejudge by comments like formal or informal. You are your own site planner. You now need the help of a plantsman and contractor. It will probably only cost $100 or so for the initial planning, as they will be receiving 10-15% commission on what ever you spend at their garden center. Have another coffee in your outdoor room. Good luck!

My recommendation.. But you need to paint out that timber landing.. It’s drawing your attention there for no reason.. It’s a decorative element that has no benefit. Which is why you feel the need to “place” something there. As a professional I wold recommend that you paint it out white so it disappears and doesn’t “compete” Witt your front door.. If you don’t believe me.. Try this truck.. Cover the area with white cardboard.. Then take a photo or leave it there and see if the “landing bothers you anymore” Bet you it won’t!!

Thanks, Paul. Totally hear what you're saying. We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. Consulting a designer would have been our first port of call. But we're cautious for very good reason. We did what we thought was the sensible thing and consulted a 'designer' for our internal renovations. We got burned big time. We're fearful the same thing could happen again, when the wrong landscape designer spots the garden illiterate coming too. We simply can't afford to make that mistake again, but understand the consequences of not consulting a designer. Consulting the trades direct does arm us with more knowledge (so we can spot the con artist a little sooner), but we don't want to be time wasting tyre kickers either. We've had some great word of mouth referrals with other trades. But due to lack of exposure or bad experiences, absolutely no-one can recommend a designer or landscaper. That in itself makes us a bit nervy.