We have a bunch of decisions to make. Instead of doing it alone, we thought we'd involve you guys.

Decision 1: Carport

So, here is the front of Weaver Drive. This wall you are looking at is the side of the carport and the exterior wall that is closest to the street. Like the rest of the house, it has painted mahogany siding on it.

From the very beginning, Lance has had a very strong desire to cover it in Ledge stone. While I like ledgestone, I also like the very ranch-like paneling on the exterior of the house. And we've gone to blows (exaggeration) over covering over paneling before on the last few houses.

However, I think I could get on board this time because Lance has some good arguments. Here's his reasoning. This is a Frank Lloyd Wright-esqe house. And Frank did it all the time. Here are a few examples:

So, we finally tracked down the Ledgestone that we are going to use (and agreed on it!)

This is the ledge stone we've chosen. Its called El Dorado "Cascade" Ledgestone. Here's a link.

Carport with rendering

I've started doing these mock-up renderings which has really helped us make decisions on a couple things. Most of the time, we are able to visualize things but sometimes we need a little help.

Decision 2: The fireplace

This is the original fireplace. And that alone makes me want to keep it because it was the builder's original plan. But we are trying to modernize. And I am not a huge fan of the color of the brick which is a little flesh-y in color.

So now that I've shared my new rendering trick, we wanted to share some options for the fireplace with you and see what you guys have to say. Before I do that, however, I want to say that the decision is not strictly on aesthetics but also on cost. We want a lot of bang-for-the-buck but need to be careful where we drop buckets of cash.