Living west of the Great Dividing Range in Northern NSW, our house gets warm enough in summer without painting it black as well. We also have a limestone gravel driveway, so the dust from that would always make a black house look messy. However, I really like the look of the black house in the title picture, it looks great! Maybe I should move to Tasmania?

I don't think there is an "in general" response to that question. Yes, you can have a combination of brick and render on houses - our current house has that, plus some wood. But it is a new build, and was designed with that finish in mind. A house such as yours was designed with a different architectural vision, and I think that original vision should be respected. As it is, your house is vintage and quite lovely; add render to it, and just see how quickly that render becomes dated, and how difficult it will be to undo.

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.

Hi Lorna Lux, I think there are some serious issues with the layout of your house. Both the living room at the front and the family and dining at the back have circulation needs that restricts furniture placement. I would be good for you to put your furniture into the spaces and see how you will need to move around it. A large amount of the circulation is wasting usable space and you are trying to fit a lot into a reasonably small house, which as Dr Retro mentions, makes the spaces quite pokey. For instance, if this is a tight urban site, which it appears to be restricted in width, why not look at bringing the entrance in part way down the side of the house which would allow much better use of the front room. You can still make a really great feature of your entry down the side and it is cheaper to create that space outside rather than give over precious floor space internally. I don't think it is ideal to enter either bedroom 1 or 2 directly off the family, dining and kitchen space. Do the occupants of bedroom 2 have walk past the dining and kitchen and up the hallway to use the shower or bath? A bit of a hike. I have worked on tight 10m wide sloping sites in inner city suburbs and there are good solutions that only take a bit of fine tuning to make them great spaces to live in. Good luck, Christine.