Sezopitz - I feel for you. I too had a series of to and fro (and finally gave up) in trying to find a façade that Council would agree with. Unfortunately the issue is fraught with 'opinions' and if the person judging doesn't like your opinion - tough luck buddy! I finally gave up as I could not afford to continually run the 'lottery' of submitting and refusals. The worst part was that I was told "We don't like it", but when asked what they would like was told "Oh, that is up to you" - when it obviously isn't. You like curves, they want angles. Total stupidity.

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!!

Hi Chris. I like the colour scheme and materials for your house, although a few things come to mind. Why have two different timber finishes, Merbau and Western Red Cedar? Is Merbau not available as a garage panel? Or is Western Red Cedar not available as post cladding? If they are both available for both applications, I would choose one for both applications. You mention black Sikaflex as joint filler for the cladding, and off-White mortar for bricks. Would you consider black mortar for brickwork for consistency, or do you not like the look of it? I bring these questions up because there are a lot of materials, which is great, but maybe minimising the number of colours and using them more consistently would produce a more cohesive visual outcome. I googled images for brickwork and black Sikaflex and this is the only decent one I could find quickly - just to give you an idea of how it might look.

You have quite a few option's but budget will decide the option's. You could render and paint the front wall's of both bedroom's a charcoal like the garage door's and sandstone clad the garage area's. You could render and paint the existing facade and use a charcoal brick on the new upper area with render again on the new lower wall. You can get bricks painted to match the existing. They are a tad expensive but maybe the only option. The problem I personally have with render is that it can end up bland. This is due to majority take the easy way out with deciding colour's and just paint it all the same colour. Using a couple different colours and using them as feature walls with other materials can look superb. The original brick looks like a great coloured brick but the issue is theres just too much brickwork so a bit of render or even some painted walls can really look great. Painting isn't expensive and the new paints are very good. The key is getting a quality render job first and not overdoing the amount of area's rendered.