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You have to remember that your old house was a finished product and this new one is in need of some beautification. It has good bones and meets the needs of your family, but needs updating/refreshing. You seem to have a good eye and decent skills, so you will be able to make this new house more charming. I'd love to see a thread devoted to your before and after pictures as you redo this house. I really believe it has a lot of potential and you are just the man to make this place a true show place. You can do this.
Like everyone else is saying, landscaping. Get some plants and hide the white part of the foundation. Get something taller and hide the meters from the front. Maybe remove a strip of concrete and landscape the side of the house.
Next would be the brick; not sure what you'd replace it with but I'd take it down and I'd enlarge the two windows on the right. There's gotta be something that can be done with the steps and railing too. And you could redo the walkway as pavers, maybe in a curved path to make it less harsh looking.
My wife regretting moving this past Fall and even broke down and cried about it a week after we got here, saying it was a huge mistake and can we somehow cancel the contract. Now that we've repainted the entire house, fixed up the kitchen cabinets, and replaced just about every light fixture, she absolutely loves it. This past week, we installed new tile floors downstairs, and we're about to call it quits for a while after we knock out a large wall. She seriously loves this new house now and wants to invite people over a lot.
I hope you get to that point and take pride in your house after you get some more work done. If your family is happy, that should be a big boost for you.
18 months ago my parents decided to downsize, they had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment, but since they are both retired, my father was concerned about the rent.
So, staying in the same apartment complex, they downsized to a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom with an office.
My mother hates it, no, she HATES it!!! She is depressed over the move, my father isn't crazy about it either, but he enjoys the difference in the rent.
My mother lovingly refers to it as a pig sty -- trust me, it is a very nice apartment in a very nice community. On site maintenance that fixes most things in 24 hours or less, 24 hour onsite secuerity, swimming pools, gym, tennis court, no infestation, no holes, she just hates it. I have tried everything to try and snap her out of it. Nothing works.
Maybe you and my mother can start a therapy group.
A happy wife equals a happy life.....so there's that
Well, actually a segment was on some show yesterday that dispels that mantra and says it's the husband's happiness that is most important to the family so there!
Chango all I can say is that you were a lucky and rare man to have owned and lived in such a beautiful, artfully crafted and designed house. Most of us never get out of a suburban tract house in our lives and man did you have something better than that!
I could never imagine living any where else than my sweet, handsome Spanish here. I think you gotta just enjoy the memories, and I agree with the others that log cabin lower level is sweet! So that's a cool space to spend some time. Get some landscaping in there but I don't know if I would do a front porch if it isn't gonna be used because of the busy road out front.
Good luck, I'm sure you can put enough of your stamp on it to make it a bit better.
It meets the family's needs well; tt's bigger than the old place (every kid gets their own room now), has 2 bathrooms (an unimaginable luxury in my world! ) and is in a city that ranks extremely high in safety, percent of owner occupated homes and desirablity.
Anyway, we are 3 months and dozens of hours into rehabbing the property and I still cannot bring myself to like this place. My wife and kids are really loving it.
It's a bit generic looking, but it isn't that bad. New(larger) windows, exterior paint, and getting rid of the chain link fencing should improve things considerably.
I see everybody here praising the old house for being charming, but i really just don't see it. That galley kitchen was hideous, for one thing. It doesn't appear to be "historic" looking, nor very functional. JMHO.
I was thinking about this post some more today, and I wonder if...well, first let me preface by saying that I'm no psychiatrist, although I apparently pretend that I have any sort of knowledge on the subject on the internet...
Okay, now that's out of the way....
What I was thinking of was an old apartment I used to have. Yeah, an apartment. I was allowed to do some minor changes to it. When I walked in, it didn't have a whole lot of character. It had some things in there, like a built in "China cabinet" that could be turned in to something charming, but it was all white, bland, and so very boring.
I was allowed to paint. So I painted the walls. I chose colors I don't normally choose such as a greenish yellow (light), and a light purple. Sounds horrid, doesn't it? It wasn't. It actually came out really, really nice. The purple was in the living room that led directly to the open space for the dining area. The greenish yellow was for my bedroom.
I then put in my black furniture in there and man, did those colors really come alive. The bedroom, I had NO intention of making it into an Asian theme, but with the greenish yellow on the walls, and my black furniture, it just came to me to do it that way. Reds and black, and even some browns worked really, really well in there.
In the living room, my black fake couch, black bookshelves, and black coffee table really made that color pop, but not bright, it actually made it incredibly soothing. Without the furniture, you would notice that there was a purplish tint to the walls, but the furniture made it just the tiniest bit more apparent, and it was very calming. Again, I chose rugs and pillows that I didn't think would normally match, but they did.
I LOVED that apartment. It was an old building, it was run down, the neighbors were fricken obnoxious, but I loved it. When I finally moved in to some bland, cookie cutter building later on, I realized that I really missed my old apartment. No, I didn't have a fabulous new dishwasher, and new washer and dryer, and all new everything like I did in the new apartment, (it was an old apartment building that got renovated in to condos, the sister of the developer got one of the condos and rented it out as an apartment, I was the first person that lived in it), and while all that shiny new stuff was great, I still missed the old place.
Why?
Because the old place had character.
Why did it have character?
Because I put myself in to that old apartment. I made it look the way that it did. I left a piece of myself there, with the work I put in to it. (I did some other minor things to it that only brought the value of it up...even though it was an apartment, I was allowed to do those things, and it made my time there enjoyable.)
Maybe that's what is going on now? You put 7 years in to a place, you left a part of you back there, you made that old place have the character that it had. Sure, it already had some, all by itself, but you did a lot to add to it.
You CAN do that with your new place. It will never be the old place, but you can make it in to something. It really doesn't take much to give something character. The next place I lived was a cottage attached to the landlord's house. For my area, that led to the backyard, she built a deck outside my door. She then put a cover over it, made of the same wood. She then hung white mosquito net curtains all around the sides, and she landscaped the garbage out of that backyard. It was my favorite place to sit because just that little bit of work, that little addition, turned a boring entry way into a slice of paradise.
I seriously think that if you start with the yard, you might start to like your house. The more you put in to it, the more it will start to take shape and have some of the character that you're missing. At least that's what I think...that's my 35 cents, (two cent opinion, adjusted for inflation).
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) and is in a city that ranks extremely high in safety, percent of owner occupated homes and desirablity. 
