I would clad it in wood

Thanks Laura that sounds like a great idea and thanks for the photo, it looks really good, the only problem is it would stand out further than the side of the house unfortunately and we share a driveway.

I think it would be helpful if you shared photo(s) showing the entire exterior for people to see what would possibly work with your house.

Hi, thanks for the suggestion, yes I'll take some shortly and add them later today.

Hi everyone,

More photos added! Does anyone know if painting our porch will look OK and if so would white work? Also what style and colour front door to make it look more modern? We would appreciate any suggestions as we've lived with it like this for 19 years and we've never liked it!

Dark Grey?

And I agree you need a modern front door would go either grey or white, if you went grey then you would need to paint/upgrade the porch window too.

Can you not remove the stone cladding and clad in wood instead? The soffit really does date the porch enormously and if you clad in wood you can change it.

Thanks Chartwell 19 for the grey idea, that looks very interesting and has definitely given us something to think about and yes we do want to change the window as well. Do you think a white porch with a modern grey door would work?

Thanks very much Victoria for your idea, unfortunately it`s not cladding, my husband says it`s built from cast concrete blocks made to look like stone. This is why we`re struggling to know what to do because the porch is well built, just so dated. We agree the soffit is dating it too!

We had a similar dilemma, and as a symmetry obsessive I couldn't cope with the door and the window offset like that. This is what we did with ours and it wasn't too costly as we kept the original footprint and foundations of the existing porch. Hope it helps

Wow!

Thanks so much Chartwell 19 for showing us how it would look in white, we are still finding it a bit hard to visualise the finished look though! Love the suggestion of the topiary tree and numbers on the wall, we thought a modern light above them too.

Wow that looks great Monica, loving the black and white, thanks for the ideas. Just wish we could afford a new brick porch!

If you do something more to the front door, say maybe an Oak door and with the right type of plants outside, the eye will be drawn to the door and not to the porch. If you make the door the focal point and not the stone around it, you will not have to do anything to the stone.Start looking at front doors and when one really takes your eye, see if you can remember what is around the door?

Hope that this helps.

Hi, thanks very much for that idea, yes we will start looking at doors and have that fitted to start with and see how it looks. Do you think a very modern style would work with the stone?

Do you need a porch?

Your house may well look better without.

As I mentioned in my previos email. the door becomes the focal point and the stone secondary. A modern door will work well with the stone.

hi Neverforever,

I think you really need to repair the entire side of the house- looking at the photos you provided, the entire side of the house look as though you have a number of spalled bricks,which have suffered from frost damage.
whatever you decide as a finish , you should address these in the final decision to protect your home.

I think that the amount of space lost at the side cladding the house in timber , would not lose a lot of space in the driveway. you have pipes at the side protruding at low level. Can you advise on the width of the space between the two houses. you own half of this width and have a right of way over the neighbouring house for driving your car, so this shouldn't really cause issues with the neighbour.

A timber clad would provide a modern update to the look of the porch, whilst the render and paint would be a simpler update.

you might want to look at external insulation and a render finish to the entire house. This is something the government is looking to push for improving the energy use of the housing stock in the uk.

best

Rowland

Thanks very much to everyone for your input.

E D, unfortunately we do really need to keep the porch as we're short on storage space.

Rowland, thanks for the suggestions, my husband agrees on the blown bricks and the insulation and render is definitely something we're going to think about now. I think we're going to start with a modern door and window and consider the rest after that.

Out of curiosity, what sort of porches (if any) do your neighbours’ houses have?

Thanks E D, the majority of them are UPVC, some have similar material to ours but different styles and not with a flat roof. None of them are modern looking and not to our taste.

Can you re-arrange the door & window ... so knock out the bricks under the window, then position the door in the middle with a tall window either side for a more modern style. Then just paint the remaining blocks which there should be less of visible

Thanks for the suggestion Lisa, that would look better wouldn't it but not sure it would work because of the position of the inner door and moving that too would be too much expense.