Something about the front of this house was bugging me a little; the way the entryway looked just didn't really seem to work well with the house. Yes, it is my design, and my original choice to design it that way. I'm not sure if the changes I've made to it work well or not either, but here's the changes. Rendering it wasn't working on this one either, so it's a screenshot cropped down to show just the front of the house.
With the changes I made I had to move the mailbox off the entryway, and I put it out in front. I took away the open windows, arched doorframe, and the walls from bottom part of the entryway. It still needed some kind of support for the top, so I replaced the walls with columns at each corner, and an arch I downloaded from 3D Warehouse between them.
I've changed the texture on the top part of entryway; I found a picture of dark wood shingles and used that. After using it there, I thought I'd better put it somewhere else on the house so that it all ties together, so I put it on the one forward facing outside wall on the loft area. Unfortunately, because I couldn't get it to render, the shingles just show as a dark brown. This is the picture I used:
I also thought that the one wall on the side near the chimney looked odd with the roughcast, so I changed it to the stonework I have on the front; I feel it seems to work better like that.
And after doing all that, I realized that the chimney I had used didn't really match either, so I found another one on 3D Warehouse that worked better, even though the roughcast on it looks very odd (although now that I'm getting a really good look at it, I think it might be a bit too tall now).
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