This side of the house, faces east and as you can see in the photo the corners of the gable ends do not match up. I know it would probably look best with all the same siding on it. But I had the idea of putting maintenance free siding in the tops of the gables since we are using a painted siding on the rest, so we don't have to paint it later on. We are not sure from which end to start the siding or where to put it to since the gable isn't symmetrical. Any ideas?

?? how bad does this look?

I don't really love this

This doesn't look right either to me

Is this the side or the back of the house? If it's the back, maybe do an arbor there. It would provide some interest while taking the attention away from the odd shape a bit.

It is the east side of the house, there will be an arbor/pergola going in on the front of the house over the front door area as the front door does not have a porch or roof there. This side of the house is actually a little over 40 ft long, so it's a long boring wall w a gable that doesn't match up evenly. The thing is though we have a large tree on that corner between the house and the street so you can't really see the area that much from the street. Thank goodness. Also there is clear view of the entire back yard from that area from the street so I planted a whole row of privet shrubs and boxwoods to grow up and add privacy there.

This is the front, the right side of the photo is the east side and around that corner is the weird side.

Frilly, in it's current state, decorative siding with gingerbread emphasizes the irregular dual pitch (angle) of the roof. My suggestion is to construct a false gable end overhang and install it to the facade to mirror the left gable end overhang at the the same pitch/angle. In other words, make it look symmetrical with a false gable to the right of the ridge line, then you can emphasize it with fish scale siding and gingerbread to sort of draw the eye away from the irregular angles on the right side. I can post a rough drawing, if you wish. Let me know.

Frillylily said:


?? how bad does this look?

This actually works well! The vertical lines do the trick! The other two really emphasize the asymmetrical pitches/angles. 🤷

Thinking of doing this for the other end of the house (west side)

?

I like that!! The vertical stripe on the other side isn't bad either. If you do this design on this side then the oddball side will blend in and go with it.

This is the front of the house, we finished the door and last month we got a brand new metal roof in Burnished Slate, a dark brown/gray color. I don't have a photo of it yet w the roof.




So here are some ideas we had for the front, can't decide

Instead of the arbor just in front of the door , why don't you expand it to do the whole middle bumpout? It would look good either way but this would include the whole section plus give you a bit more dappled shade.

I don't want to shade the window, It lets in alot of sun that we love, also it would cost more, and I grow sun loving plants there. So we thought we'd just put a large arbor of some type over the door area. I thought something arched might look nice-soften some of the lines going on. Also the window will be replaced with one that does not have grids. That window has alot of problems and has to be replaced, none of our other windows have grids so we are going to match it. I guess at this point, just trying to decide if we want to put shakes on just the top of the gable there on the front, or if we want to do the whole wall. And also if we want to put a rock/brick pattern across the bottom of the front, like a skirting, or just put the green siding all the way down?

This side, I mean on the front side of the house. The photo on the east side seems that there is something weird on this side.

yvrhedges said:This side, I mean on the front side of the house. The photo on the east side seems that there is something weird on this side.

I don't understand your comment? There is a gable on the front of my house and also one on the west side and also on the east side, I have 3 gables on my house. The east side is over 40 ft long, the west side is only about 22 ft. The back side of the house is "L" shaped.

Frilly, on the front bump out, the stone (man made, 2" thick) with a cap, for water run off, is a great idea! Typically siding trim is not run along the top of stone, but it's your choice.

Stone, or no stone, IMPO emphasizing only the gable with shakes seems more attractive.

Question: Is the gable vent staying? If so, It might be a good idea to paint it to blend in with the final color of the shakes as best you can to yield attention to the gingerbread. If the vent is gone, or will be gone, never mind.

As for the arbor idea, a flat arbor seems to not emphasize your beautiful door any more than it is without an arbor. I have two suggestions for the front door area. 1) For unification, build a small false gable, centered over the door to match the large one, and finish it the same, with shakes and the gingerbread, or, 2) If your heart is set on an arbor, build one in a gable style, centered over the door, and there are many possibilities on finishing or styling the gable end of an arbor.

I had thought of doing an arched arbor, but had not considered a gable type, I will look into that, that might be nice. I wanted to build something over it INto the roof, but decided not to since it would add alot of cost to the roof job.

No the vents are going away, we had a ridge vent put in when we did the new roof.

I like the shakes only in the gable area and not over the whole thing also, but husband wants to do the whole wall there, I think it's too over powering.

Part of the reason I wanted to do the rock patterned panels over the bottom part is that our house sits on the ground really close, when it snows it piles up against the siding there and ruins the paint. So I think the vinyl panels would be water proof and if snow piles up it shouldn't harm the finish that way. We are using engineered wood sheeting, 4x8 panels and painting them. They come pre-primed but I will still buy paint that has a primer in it.

We used the same type of siding here and we also primered before painting. It makes a difference.

If you do shakes on the whole wall, the rock will break it up.

Is the rock a vinyl material, or a realistic looking man made material on panels?