Sorry duplicate post was having trouble posting

I would match the new timber to the colour of your gutter as it is attached to the house. The merbau decking is a great colour so I wouldn't do anything else but the stain in your photo. I can't see any concrete in your photos, and I would question whether it needs to be painted? Quite often painted concrete wears and needs repainting. If you can't live with the bare concrete consider a concrete treatment and imprint pattern where the colour is mixed in with the concrete and lasts forever. Best of luck, Dr Retro of Dr Retro House Calls

Oh boy oklouise, this is dangerous territory when you ask about the perfect reno! We thought we did have the perfect Reno we could afford in stages but we got just about ready to lodge with council and our architect surprised us with the costings going over by $200K and giving us a lovely flat roof and new cladding for our first stage budget. We now have about $10K less after this process and are really feeling vulnerable I suppose. So we are back to square one but the essentials are: repair the deck on the steep slope at the back, remove internal walls to open the space downstairs, reposition the staircase, new flooring, new kitchen and provide an aesthetically pleasing but functional entrance. Wish list would be garage/carport & driveway, flat roof, new bathroom upstairs, new laundry & WC downstairs and landscaping. $100K for the first stage (which probably means just deck repairs and removing walls?!) then we would be looking at refinancing and seeing what we can do next. The architect designs were beautiful but unattainable unfortunately. Anyway, I advertised our job about a week ago and I think someone is interested in meeting with us and I've also left a message for Dr Retro so I don't want you all to spend too much time on this although I really really appreciate and welcome your advice. Thank you again oklouise, Lisa

what a great looking house...could you have the dark colour around the front porch, front of the garage and the alfresco walls (where it's shady in the photo) and have the rest of the house white or surfmist?