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.

Hi there Nick, looking at your photos you look like a modern hamptons family which is lovely, do you live in a warm climate. I did like the photo you posted of the open plan living and think that you are on the right track with interior colours I have marked out how I would like the first floor, I have moved the kitchen to the end wall to line up with BBQ outdoor kitchen, plumbing for this would have easy access via the garage below. The white tiles look lovely and hard wearing for the entrance foyer and Rumpus room, the stairs in timber due to the amount of traffic even continuing in up stairs foyer kitchen dining living, Carpet in bedrooms and downstairs theater. Kitchen in white but possibly Shaker style white doors these are very popular. Using existing sliding exterior doors if possible from kitchen.Dining to verandah, I think this ceiling would be best kept white to help reflect light back indoors, the tiles appear to be in good order but you might consider changing these along with new upstairs flooring Some where for a laundry shute would be handy, actually a Dumb Waiter so you could move the laundry with ease both up and down! The roof painted a soft colour, grey/white or off white, the verandah railing could be the same colour or you could do glass. The builder had a very different style of house to what I think you are wanting. Your photo

I've been playing around with a pantry location. Originally, I was going to move the pantry into the laundry with some custom shelving and cut the laundry space in half. Now, Im thinking of cutting into the study area and building a wall there, and converting the new space into a long and narrow walk in pantry. Either that or build half a wall and put built in shelving in the study. Building the extra wall will reduce the need to cover in the door way that is currently in place and instead utilising it. Thoughts? p.s. this isnt too scale.

Hi Emma, in response to your two questions 1) You can paint aluminium window frames with the right preparation, however, it gets tricky where the windows open and are in contact with another part of the frame. Your windows look like they are sliding windows, so they will be hard to paint, where they slide in the track. Even if you can paint all of the window frames the new paint is likely to chip where it slides. Being old aluminium frame windows they will be very poor at controlling heat loss and gain (as the window frame conducts the heat) so I would suggest that you save your dollars and replace them with something more energy-efficient. Many windows are made to standard sizes based on brick opening dimensions so keep an eye out for new/old stock, and wrongly ordered window sizes that are for sale on eBay and Gumtree to match your window opening sizes. 2) Your sill bricks are probably cored (with holes running through them) or have recessed "frogs" on the top face. These holes or recesses are concealed in the way that they are laid. If you slice your sill brick diagonally to flatten out the front in line with the wall then they will be exposed and look really bad. There are lots of other more cost-effective ways to work with what you have and improve the look of your home. Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls/Dr Retro Virtual Visits