Someone with a good eye...advice please

KELY

Hello, I am a newbie and after abit of advice on changing the look of the outside of my home. I have added pictures, and hope that you lovely people can be honest with me and tell me what you think. At the moment I have the money put aside to rip out the porch door and the internal door and make the hallway longer and just have one external door. I love the oak doors with the black wrought iron door handle and mail box on wall, however I want to keep the windows as white upvc ( haven't got the money saved yet to change these) We are also looking to remove the tile cladding (I think it's called) on the front of the house and have it renderd so it's a cream finish to it. Because of the size of the door, we will have to have a door and side panels/sidelights so I'm not sure and can't picture it in my mind whether it's going to look nice, as the one I've seen close to our house has only the oak door, without sidelights, and white windows. I was going to add pictures but it's saying I can't add links due to being a new user : ( So, our house is a s60's 3 bed semi, with white upvc windows, porch built into house and tile cladding under the one bedroom window. We would like an oak door with sidelights, with either oak frame or paint the frame white. Sorry it's not much to go off without pictures. MissKY88 is my photobucket and I have the pics on there if any one has time to check them out. Thank you for your time

Ms_Chocaholic

Here's the link for you
http://s985.photobucket.com/user/MissKY88/library/?view=recent&page=1

KELY

Aww, thank you, that's so nice of you

Mojisola

Try covering the glass doors with cardboard and see what the effect is inside the house. It might make the hallway very dark.

WestonDave

In terms of the door I would personally go for number 3 - 2 is a bit cottagey and won't suit the age of your property and number one again with the decoration in the glass hints at an older property than yours. Not having a letter box is good for energy efficiency as I understand it.


Re the tiles - clearly from next door they can be removed and replaced. However the effect you will get is more like you would get if you cream coloured next doors white UPVC panelling than the house you have pictured. Rendering the whole front would be expensive and would then cost money to at least keep painted if not periodically re-rendered. Another option might be to see if you can have the tiles replaced with some form of wooden cladding possibly to match in with the new door. With modern treatments wood can be very long lasting (the trendy thing currently in high efficiency windows is to have wooden frames) - the issue would be whether it would discolour in the weather but I'm sure it could be done. On the other hand if the door is wood effect UPVC then may the same material used could work.

missbiggles1

I'm going to be blunt (just for a change!) and say that those 3 wooden doors, lovely as they are, are going to look awfully pretentious on a house like that, as if you're trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Sorry.

KELY

Oh really I thought it would look abit different to every other house in the street and was hoping more for 'Oww that house looks lovely' ...Oh dear, haha. I took the inspiration from a house on 'Help my house is falling down' as they had a similar style house but a single door withiut the side panels and I thought it looked lovely and homely ;/. Any suggestions on what would look nice?

KELY

Do you think this would make it less 'pretentious' if we were to add a type of porch to the house.

brownscarpentry.com/images/external/external-gallery/Handcrafted%20Oak%20Front%20Doors.jpg

bouicca21

No.

The outside of your house is plain and functional. Leave it alone. It matters not one jot that it looks like others in the street.

k3lvc

Unless you're going to change the windows/roofline etc then I'd leave well alone.

I also wouldn't be using the scan of the baby on it anywhere :rotfl::rotfl:

MX5huggy

I agree with every one else, you have a functional house you don't want to go adding mock cottage features.

Google "modern front door" for some more in keeping ideas, I would not like a sliding glass front door.