Sorry to dampen your ideas about changing your home but I think it is a beautiful home, in no need of any changes at all, in my opinion! It is a picture perfect home with a lovely low maintenence garden and beautifully presented. I would not have bought the home personally, if I wanted to make the amount of external changes as you are thinking of, perhaps instead, use this home as a stepping stone and buy something already more like what you are dreaming of owning or accept the beautiful home you already have, again in my opinion of course!!

Congratulation on your new home, big investment and hopefully a fruitful one. It looks like a fairly spacious house, the open areas are a bit limited but certainly great opportunity to design your own lifestyle. These are few things that you might consider in your approach to any alterations; 1. Work with a Building Designer/Architect to develop a comprehensive brief - just moving lines on a plan because you might like or dislike certain rooms is unlikely to produce a good result - you need a whole site approach especially as you have a corner site with north fronting. 2. Define your lifestyle for the next 5 to ten years - at least as far as you can - this will help in determining space allocation for perceived activities. The design relates to what you are going to do in the space and fixed factors like sun orientation and existing neighbors and neighborhood issues. 3. Determine problem issues such as structural, security, insulation heating and cooling - there may be more than first seen under a fresh coat of paint. 4. Have a budget and a timeline for achieving milestones - else time will go on forever and little will be achieved. Determine what you must do first, then what is required to do so as to achieve the next step. 5. Do a number of design proposals before settling on a result - in my last job four distinct sketch plans were done for hopefully a good result - it cost the client considerably, but as they say - "pay peanuts and .....you get ........" 6 Above all do not change anything until you are happy with the design - cheaper to move lines that walls. There are opportunities on your site - you should identify them and exploit them to your lifestyle. Wish you the best with your renovations. Michael Manias Manias Associates Building Designers mm407p@gmail.com

Great to hear that you have had a good experience in an unpopular neighborhood. Our first home was an ex-army house in the extremely unpopular South Auckland of New Zealand. All we could afford then... and we lived there happily for seven of eight years. We loved our home and our initial neighbors, many of whom we are still friends with. But as folk moved on and a rougher element moved in, break-ins began happening, clothes stolen off the clothesline, plants, pots, ornaments, swing sets and even a trampoline! It was no longer safe to leave a door unlocked let alone open. The crunch came when youths began to harass our children walking to and from school simply because they believed it was their right to take what they wanted (uniform and shoes, food) and trying to force them to buy drugs, We moved on. I guess it comes down to; is it just an unpopular demographic area? or is it a rough area, gang related residents, drugs on the street etc? The question does not stipulate why an area may be deemed unpopular. I said above to choose the better area and this is what we did second time around, we live in a preferred area of a demographically unpopular rural town in Otago, NZ and love it here. We have renovated and will be mortgage free in our retirement. However we would never again live in an area unpopular because of the crime rate.

With all due respect I think that your home looks more like 1980's than 1950's. 1980's homes tend to be lots of brickwork, and 1950's are often more lightweight materials. My crystal ball says that the colours that you are looking at are going to date as we move through these grim times as pre-pandemic colours. After World War Two there was a general movement to lighter palettes and brighter colours, so the cliched Monument trim, grey render and black window frames will be going out of fashion. Here is an example of a 1950's home with a joyous use of colours. Some of these colours were also popular in the 1980's so if you want to be true to the original era you should do some historical research. For many people it is hard to visualise how colours will work on their home, which is why what has been done to death before is often repeated. If you need a hand with colour selections then perhaps you should contact a Dulux colour consultant or other design professional. Best of luck Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls and Dr Retro Virtual Visits.