Would love to see any photos of the New England style cladding, we have a 1960's house that we are updating and are considering both render and cladding. We are making the top windows deeper and are trying to decide whether to use white or grey aluminium/pvc frames. We have had grey (covered in tape in pic) bifold doors installed but can have these powder coated in white if it is better to stick to white windows. Thank you!

I would go with black upvc windows at the front I think they would look really classy and different. I have an original 1930s round bay window fronted house with the original leaded lights they are beautiful mine is one of only two houses on the street with the original windows. As you can imagine they really need replacing but I cannot bear to let them go but if I have to I would be different and go for grey upvc. Or black.

We have a very similar phenomenon with our guttering/downpipes. After we had ours replaced (I’m still regretting getting rid of our iron main stench pipe - if that’s the term) I started hearing knocking, popping, banging noises coming from them. After quite a bit of head-scratching it turned out this is indeed caused by contracting/expanding the plastic pipes, in our case by using hot water. We‘re now kind of used to the noises this makes but it’s not great really.

I think the long stairs window suits this house and personally I would change the proportions of the window to the left of the front door.... as you now seem to have done. I’m not sure that a living roof suits the front of this house and I would rather see a plain and modern flat roof. However softening the frontage with planting could look super