I'm not sure if you guys need a certain level of detail before offering assistance so if you need more information then what I give here I'll try to check back frequently. (warning this is going to be a long pic heavy post!)

DH and I have a 1920's bungalow in Eastern Pa that we bought about 4 years ago. We have next to no insulation in the house and the plan is to remedy that this year. We started a kitchen reno project last fall that included taking off the back wall and rebuilding, including adding insulation and all new windows, the process has started.

The plan is to tear off the rest of the siding, replace the windows with new construction windows (most of the windows are replacement windows but they were installed terribly and have huge gaps, the others are original and are single plane chipped wood and falling apart), insulate, install new sheathing add house wrap and reside the house. We're DIYer's wih a lot of helping hands many of whom have experience with projects like this, including DH so I'm comfortable with the competance level.

Here's a current picture of our house.

from the side.

Other houses on our street.


(My grandmother's house is the brick ranch and my great grammy's house is the two story brick house to the left of it - from my front porch)

I want to have pillers like the ones in this picture

My house sits right on the road and the existing aluminum siding is VERY dirty. DH wants the siding to be light (makes the house appear bigger then dark siding would) and I gave up arguing.
I think brick would be cleaner then siding (most of the dirt is from the windows up the porch ceiling).
Ideally I'd like to have brick facade on the front under the porch roof. and then plank siding around the rest of the house. Weh nwe took the existing siding off we did find that they had clapboard boards up to a point in the peaks and it changed to shingles. I'd love to keep that look and have planks up to the bottom pf the windows on the second floor and then change to shingles.
As you can see, we have a lot of brick homes around us, but I'm not sure how that would look with the 3 different siding styles. I was thinking maybe if the brick only came up to the windows it would look a bit better. Then we would have the planks around the whole house and the shingles up in the peaks.
We're looking into hardie planks and hardie shingles, painted at the factory.

Then I'll need to decide if I want the same color for the planks and shingles or have one slightly darker. I also want to have the trim stand out. I really love wide trim. We're going to jsut ahve regular white windows, no fancy coloring.
Plus I want to keep our front door which has mardi gras colored glass, so I have to somehow tie that in too.

The door itself needs to be repainted, I'm not sure if I want to stick with white or try something else. I think that'll play into the trim color too.

This is hard work!

Hardiplank siding on entire first floor, hardishingles on second floor (dormer and under side peak), all painted in the same stormy gray shade.
Tying the two textures together with colour prevents the house looking smaller but still keeps it interesting.
Thumbs up to wide white trim.

Redo porch pillars as in inspiration photo. Plain white wooden railings (not skinny) on porch perimeter. Blue beadboard on porch ceiling.
Hanging baskets/hayracks as preferred to tie in mardi gras glass colours through plant materials.

Manufactured ledgestone or rock facing on exterior house foundation and bottom of pillars as preferred.

Lots of beer and pizza for your helpers.

I was thinking exposed foundation could get painted, perhaps a darker grey color to "ground" the house.

Thoughts on brick...not a good idea? Or is stone just better? I was worried about using a stone veneer since I'm surround by brick homes.
Also, there's a cement quarry in my backyard, my town was built on the backs of the cement workers. I'd rather not get rid of the cement look all together. We will be redoing all the sidewalks around the house next year, likely with brick, but that remains to be determined. I might want to talk DH into a stamped concrete patio out back, we'll see.