Quote Originally Posted by CornRickey View Post
Couple things that caught my eye; is there any way to turn the garage 90 degrees so you don't see the bay doors when approaching the house, instead of the 3 bays, one large and one small. The two gable walls on either side of the front door look like they need windows. I like the rock veneer around the whole house. Don't change it to just the front to save budget or just cut it all together. I would place a wood ledger on the top of it instead of the cap, painted the trim color. Fake shutters are fake. Take that budget and add it to the window trim package. Fully wrapped interior window trim really makes a impact. Back to the garage.... Any possibility of taking the last Bay and putting a garage door on the other end also? Add Windows along the rear wall of the garage. I put in privacy glass in mine so no one could look inside but it let's allot of light in. I have a 1100sqft shop with a 16x12 on one end and a 10x10 on the other end and love the cross ventilation and light effects it makes. Just observations.
With the lot layout we wouldn't really be able to go for a side load garage. We have somewhat of a dry creek, water runoff the cuts through the property that we will be working around a bit. Going to the side load would make that workaround a bit tougher. The two front gables originally had windows in them, but we didn't like how they look. It was very unbalanced looking and it took away from the symmetrical farmhouse look we're going for. We will keep the rock all the way around; we originally had it on the porches, too, but took it off to draw the eye to the porch. We may do a wood cap if we can. Our thoughts right now are to do lap siding on most of the house with shake shingle looking siding on the gables and board and batten on the porches. We'll paint that all the same color in a little darker grey than that first picture. We feel like the shutters give it that farm look and we're hoping to build them with solid lumber, preferably reclaimed wood. We may add the back side garage door if the budget allows...we should have our bids in from the couple contractors we're considering, in the next week or two. The architect had windows on the back of the garage, but I had him remove them. I'm not sure I want to deal with windows as far as cleaning and working around them with shelving. But, I understand your point about light...maybe it would be worth considering.