I have PGH brown quarry tiles throughout the kitchen, living, dining and areas of my 1980's house. I want to replace them. Can tiles or timber or bamboo floors be laid over existing tiles? I would really like to go with polished concrete, but is it worth the cost, and effort, of removing the tiles ..... and would what's underneath be satisfactory to "polish" ??? How costly is this? It's a big area.

I reckon that going dark will make it slightly more modern , but lets talk about the elephants -- the roof will still be brown so that is always going to show what era it is ; the garage door is always going to be bland unless you go red , yellow or orange , but then that will reinforce the era of the bricks and roof , and I don't want to be too insensitive , but what is that front appartatus ? It may be for a wheelchair , but it doesn't look like it drops ; it looks to be a different era again and similar to say steel stockyards . Painted the same as your trim etc will soften and tie in the look , but if it isn't neccessary , I'd look at removing it , or somehow 'hide' it . And I guess I'd also add that the red oxide coloursteel fence doesn't help either , its a bit less of a worry but still an issue IMO . Personally , I'd go lighter -- all the trim in surfmist or similar ( an offwhite with a blue tinge ) , and if leaving that front apparatus , paint it the same and plant some 1 metre or taller evergreens around it . BUT so that it isn't 'just' brown and white , I'd ideally change the garage door and entrance door to maybe a red cedar ( both with surfmist 'surrounds' ) , or paint the two doors in charcoal or similar ( monument etc ) , again with the lighter surrounds , if budget is tight . And the fence -- ideally , change it , but even painted monument will help quite a bit . IF you do go dark , then what about a bluey/black Japanese black -- just paint everything , including the 'cattleyard' ? The entrance door looks to be wood , so if going dark , you could paint/stain it ( and the sidelight windows etc ) the Japanese Black -- the garage door personally I'd change to wood or even a fake woodgrain panelled door , again in Japanese Black . With that , I guess the fence you'd go a mid charoal -- sort of greyer lighter tones than monument , but you don't want lighter fences for several reasons , both looks and practicality wide . The other option I guess , if you are brave , would be to not only embrace the era , but even go back a bit , and do everything but the brick in apricot or even mint -- personally I wouldn't do buttery yellow or blues or even sherwood green , but basically add a pastel fun tone that will work with the brick and roof , but doesn't look like a bumble bee haha .

My first thought was white with black guttering would look stunning, or a stone and black or grey with black, its really what you love, great house.

Im getting head around it all now, its like putting a puzzle together and realising you’re missing pieces. i agree a deep charcoal/grey would be the best colour with the brick. Unfortunately my husband does not want to paint the aluminium gutters and windows which are brown. . His argument is that if we attempt to do it ourselves it may look worse as it is fiddly and time consuming painting aluminium and not really a job for a first time DIY, especially as it is a two story house. My solution was to match the windows and gutters with a rich grey with a brownish undertone like namadji. It is classified as a grey but looks brown to me. What i am afraid of is doing what your neighbour has done and making the whole house oppressively brown. Do you think I could get away with a deep grey that doesnt quite match the aluminium and then just paint the wooden trims? I would also paint the white brick in the entrance the same colour and the fence and studio. Im afraid of doing all this work only for it to be half arsed. We need to replace the balconies as they are unsafe but unfortunately my husband and i have had a difficult year financially and we don’t want to sink money into the front of house at the moment. The back will need a complete overhaul and we need to preserve funds for that. I suspect ultimately there may not be a solution unless we commit to doing the whole job. Alternatively we could stage it. I am clearly thinking aloud and appreciate all the input and patience!