Agree about the paving stones - a mistake to be repaired & pulling them up & allowing someone on eBay to reuse them where they may match, sounds good. However, don't agree that the bricks are a mistake. Personally, I love textured bricks as you can pick out a colour from them to do trims & in 15 years, change the colours & refresh & still go well with the brick colours. I think yours are particularly nice. Removing shutters - great. If you can, take the opportunuty to take off the ornate screens on doors & windows & replace them with the very simple looking security screens. Renewing the roofing material to something that lets in more light is also a good idea. If it's not feasible to do at this time, it can always be planned in steps, but it's good to know ahead what the plan is/will be. Re colour choices. I would suggest not going with the current fashion completely. Remember when everything in every suburb was "mission brown"? Everything that has that colour is immediately dated. Best of luck, and enjoy

Unless you have the money to update everything else to better complement the bricks, painting them will give you a much more updated look. Over the past 18mths I’ve been working on the front and landscape of my current house, including painting the bricks and it has made the world of difference! I’ve attached a before and after photo! Good luck.

The after is wonderful, makes the house look very open.

Hello Anna. Painting bricks can be tricky because you are going to end up with " painted bricks ", which can look terrible. The problem with paint can be that everything is the same colour, i.e. the brick face, the horizontal joints and the perpendiculars. Once dust settles on the joints and after the first rain streak marks form and you will regret every having spent the money and time doing it. The beauty of bricks are the texture and the slight variation in colour. If you don't like the brick colour, consider staining or lime washing the bricks. This will give you the colour change you may need without loosing the texture or richness of the brick look. The lime or stain appear slightly patchy, which provides character to the finish. Your house may look good with a lime wash as in the photo below. Other than that, if you just hate bricks, then render / plaster it. If you need any more advice, please give us a call at Gap Design. Cheers