Curb appeal...or the lack thereof

Here is our house. I've watched it through all the seasons now. Summer is definitely the best as things grow around it and in front of it to cover it's many flaws.

Here is our decorative wood thing that is under our gutter. Whoever replaced the roof wrapped the shingles around this "decorative" piece instead of putting it behind the gutter. Shame on them. Mr Tommy is supposed to fix that at some point. But obviously the "decorative" wood element needs help too. It's basically the same color as the brick as well as being somewhat rotten.

 Our porch is made of new bricks whereas the house is made of old chicago brick. And wherever the bricks leaked on the front of the house, the old owner replaced them with new bricks rather than finding the old chicago style bricks, which, according to Tom, are about the easiest thing to find around here. So shame on them again for ruining the character of our 120 year old rowhouse.

See how the bricks are struggling? And the window air-conditioners aren't exactly adding anything to the charm either, but those aren't going to be changed for central air any time soon, if ever, so they are a necessary evil for a few months of the year.

But lately, I've been taking lots of walks around the neighborhood with the kids in the morning and trying to get ideas of what I'd like to do "someday" to the front of the house.  It's so fun to see the fronts of all the different old houses around here.

Here is one that's kinda cute. It's sorta red white and blue (not my fave) but it's at least well kept.

This is the decorative wood at the top of their house. I like when it's something that is bold enough to stand out from the house like this, but I wouldn't choose these colors.

This one is also red ,white, and blue-ish but I also liked the little cement boxes they put over the windows. They add a little.

Ivy covers so many flaws. Maybe I should just start with growing a boat-load of ivy on the house.

This one is a little too contrasty for my taste, but I actually like the black porch. If you blow up the picture you can see the detail better.

This one is a favorite of mine. I always wanted a house with a red door, and I love the window boxes and the wrought iron porch. And they did the little cement detail over the windows as well. It looks so neat and tidy with the red, white, and black.

Isn't it cute? And with the little flag!

This one is cute. It reminds me of the house in the Cosby Show. It's not so stand-out-ish but I there is a little gold in there too with the green and I think it looks classy.

See the cute door?

This one is another favorite of mine. It is VERY colorful, but muted too. The wooden corbels are cute and the colors are green, yellow-ish, and a dark red.

See this porch cover thing? I love it!

And isn't the top cute? I love the details in this house.

This is the kind of porch I want too. The cement steps with the wrought iron rail. It's better than our heavily covered front porch.

This one looks black but it's actually a dark blue. I like that one too but it wouldn't look good with our color brick I don't think.

Of course this is a whole different thing than what we have, but I really like this one anyway.

It's a corner house with a garden that wraps all the way around it.

And has this great balcony off the back.

So, anyway, which do you like? Any tips for our house? I could never pick out exactly what to do, but my idea is to fix the top of our house and repaint that wood there. The brick facade needs to be fixed with  matching bricks (or all new bricks probably) and something decorative put in above or around the windows. I want to take off our front porch and put in new cement steps with iron railing and maybe a transom window above it! I do not have the funding for this project at this point, but maybe someday...if I'm REALLY nice to Mr Tommy he'll figure out a way to help me make it happen.