House cladding

[twoboots]

I'm considering a particularly ugly house in a good location with lots of space and garden. It's an extended bungalow-with a first floor (sorry I'm not aware of the correct nomenclature)
It has an integral double garage
I fecking hate the exterior.
Does anyone have experience with having cladding or similar to improve the look ilif their home?

I have cladding on one side of my house.

I am in a coastal area so the weather side is slate-hung to throw off water in storms, except that the first two metres from the ground has timber shiplap cladding, which I treat with linseed oil.

(this is because, if people brush against slates, or ride their bike into them, they would break or fall off)

Because it needs re-treating every few years, I can reach the shiplap off a stepladder. If it was the whole height of the house, I would need to pay someone to put up scaffolding. The same would apply if it was painted timber, though it might last 5 years.

If you want to clad above ground floor, I think you need tiles, slates or plastic cladding to avoid frequent difficult maintenance. Or you could have it rendered, and possibly painted. Painted brickwork looks vile. I am not keen on plastic.

Don't put up that awful stone cladding hat used to be popular a while ago. I have refused to buy houses that had that!

Thee is some nice cedar etc these days though. Show us a picture of the house and we can make suggestions as to what would suit the house, the area etc.

We bought a house with dormers that were clad in timber. It looked spectacularly vile, but was huge for the money. We replaced the timber with white upvc. It was a huge house and very long and we replaced cladding front and back and renewed guttering and flat roofs that also ran front and back along the dormers for about £5/6k, though this was a whole ago and Northern prices. It was still ugly but immeasurably improved. We didn't do any further maintenance to the cladding in the next five years before we moved out. The front (south facing) still looked immaculate, but I noticed as I stood in the back garden on the day we moved out a hint of green lichen at the bottom of the cladding at the gloomiest part.

Maybe just some advice as to how to make the exterior less of an eyesore, other than make the windows one colour
here

It's no uglier than I am.

If the tile-hung facings round the windows are a different colour to the roof tiles, it will look odd. Don't try to paint them or wash them though, that will only cause more trouble.

The lead verge at the gable end looks very odd to me. See if you can find a well-recommended local roofer and see if it can be converted to a dry verge. No need to do that until the roof or verge goes wrong and needs repair though. To my eye the white garage doors are a bit too striking. If they are PVC they could be spray-painted, or you can paint them yourself with non-drip gloss, after very thorough cleaning. Same with the window frames. If you paint them, do the oldest ones to match the newest, because chances are the oldest ones will need mending or replacing first. Unless the newer ones are of poor quality. You will know within a few months of moving in.

It's obviously had money spent on it, I think it's just that the previous owner's taste is not the same as yours.