Iniquities of Scale

Let's talk about our house's bad side, the right side, for a moment. Here is the before:

And here is the current, depicting our Tyvek escapades last Saturday:

Quite a bit different... that rickety add-on living room is gone, the layers of siding are (mostly) gone, we got a new leak-free roof and the yard is all ripped to pieces.

Now I do recognize that the "before" may seem to be more appealing than the after right now, but sometimes you have to tear things apart before they get better. It will definitely improve to an extent with some strategic landscaping, some nice board and batten siding and trim around the windows (and, um, installing the missing ones). I do love that stone foundation though.

But there is a glaring problem that we can't fix. Actually, there are two. First, the top and bottom windows on the far left don't line up. This kills me a little, but I will survive since I've noticed that many old houses have this issue. Second, and much more hard to swallow, is that the addition is totally out of scale. Those French doors off the living room look as though they should be the main entrance. Which they're not.

I read somewhere (the source escapes me) that an addition should be no larger than two-thirds the size of the existing space. Ours is like four-thirds the size. Ouch. Make no mistake - the extra living space is nice, but from this angle the whole thing looks wrong. Once again I ask myself, what was the previous owner thinking?

My right side is not my better side either, so I can't be too judgmental. I am comforted by the fact that few people will ever really see our house from this angle. I just hope the neighbor's sheep aren't architecturally savvy, because this would drive them crazy.