You have spent a ton of someone else's money and wound up with a house with no style reference. It was already looking bitsy with the half hearted car port and you have emphasized the gables and made that worse. The car port has no gable. There is no point saying "oh, but the orange is only for the big bits of the house, because, you have used the same timber on something so insubstantial as bannisters. If horizontal bands of wood ever looked good in gables, it would have been done by now. It has never been done before, and is not part of any tradition. That will be for a reason. But you have done that to a house that used to be brick and is now rendered. In other words, the house used to be traditional mid century but was not that any more. And then you added another layer. See the problem? Too many ingredients in the cake. White and cream can go together. But not a muted bluish cream with big slabs of orange wood. It makes the walls look insipid and dirty. Talking of insipid, with the old window treatment, there was some character with the sloping bricks. Now, there are shallow ripples in the wood, and shallow ripples in the windows, and shallow, too-small lights on the outside. If it was a woman, she would be wearing two brooches, each 2 mm by 1 mm. And what are those mismatched pimples at shin height. Moral of the story: if you want the viewer to enjoy the subtle textures, don't mess them up. If you want to wear a white suite, that's fine - but please make it clean and with no defects at all. If you want to go for subtle variations in texture, be my guest. But don't have the top of the middle two windows on the right 100 mm lower. The eye says, "what is that for?" Is that supposed to be like that, or were they saving money? When is the top of the middle windows 100 lower? Never. That will be for a reason. You have probably just discovered it. You know how you're really design sensitive? Well, the pitch of the roof on the gables and the pitch of the rails for the front steps is close enough to ask the eye if they match and different enough for the eye to say: nope. You might have had a rail the same colour as the gutter and the angles the same. That might have worked. Actually, the biggest problem is knowing which is the positive and which is the negative space. The gables and rails say "I'm the hero! I'm a loud colour!" And the walls say, "Nope, you are not the important bit of the house, and those who see you know that I am the physically solid one. And there is more of me". And the gables say back "Nope, dope, you are the most insipid colour on the whole house, remember?" If you were alive in the early 80's you might remember Colour Me Beautiful by ? Jackson. Pop cultural phenomenon. Before the "makeover", the house's roof and walls belonged to the same pallet (Summer, as it happens). The fence was there, but able to be ignored. Now, the bright orange fights with the dark brown. (The orange is an Autumn colour.) (The white windows are winter.) The orange and the muted brown are similar darknesses, esp if the top of the gable is in shade. They clash, in other words. Also: how often do you think the owners will go out onto the master bedroom / attic / office patio that overlooks the street? Let me answer that: n e v e r. A bit like Volvo making ugly cars all those years ago: they still cost just as much to make. Disclaimer: I am not a competitor or a design professional. You might take comfort from that. P.S. Just back from looking at the interior. It looks really good. It is uniformly modern. I would have gone with less orange floors. But, blame the clients for that. Now the outside just looks like you were trying to save money. You might ask, why does the angle of the roof have to match the angle of the bannister? The answer is: because you made them the same loud colour and the same material. The edge of the loud orange gable is at a particular angle (actually three angles, but I digress). Also, the ONLY place where the loud orange wood is angled is on the steps: the place where it is least important. You are begging the view to ask if the banister to settle into the rest of the house by being the same angle. About the three angles: if the roof only had one angle, and if the angle was the same as the angle of the bannister, that would look MUCH better. There would be horizontal and vertical (all houses have these), and one diagonal angle. Emphasising one diagonal would have been coherent.

I would start with making a decision on the carport first. Start by talking to the council as you may not be able to do a double carport (and the single carport at your neighbours looks like a tight squeeze!) Also as Missmel said you should probably also make a decision whether to paint or not early on. If you are going to go with carport, paint, new awning and possibly porch windows you are getting into a whole new look so I would start talking a professional about the best way to design it. As an alternative to the porch enclosure could you get the front windows double glazed to reduce noise? If it was my place I think I would only be changing the awning, paint the fences, landscape, and maybe do a single carport if its really needed (plus the tiling etc that you mentioned). Some new fretwork might be nice too. To me the main thing to change is the bullnose, as you said its not original and it looks heavy and dominating. You will have to post some pics when done I will be really interested to see how this all turns out.

I Like the up down cylinder/square black lights but your lights are high set so it would be just down light. I have a light like the last photo but it's a chunky cylinder instead of square, I think I got it at Bunnings ages ago, it's on an internal courtyard wall and looks amazing when turned on. Could your cousin do one of each, ie: up down and just down, Just down on the entrance as you don't want to light up the entrance ceiling and up down on the tall wall, it would be great if it could be dropped down a bit. cheers

Thank you so much, Julie. I thought you would be interested in the end result, given how much encouragement and advice you so generously gave me. :-) I do love it. It has made such a difference and I think (fingers crossed) the landscaping will give it the finishing touch. We are reroofing the pergola, so will post photos when that is completed. The gazebo looks great after its facelift, too.