Yes, fatten the columns, paint the front door a bright color, yes to the trim and consider putting in a railing to add more brightness to the porch area.

Also the shutters disappear against the brick, so maybe paint the shutters a non-brick color so they show up against both the white and the brick colors.

What a nice home :) I definately like your idea of wrapping the pillars with new square columns and adding some trim around the door. I think a new solid door without the window in a deeper color would look nice as well as painting the shutters and garage doors to match. But I think the chunkier columns will be the most dramatic change. Please post finished pictures.

An up close picture would help on the door question. I would vote yes on enlarging the pillars. I think the right landscaping and beds would do a lot. I would have to see the cement porch floor to give an opinion on that, but my initial reaction would be no. I would prefer landscaping (shrubs,etc.) in front of porch, rather than a railing.

This post was edited by lizbeth-gardener on Tue, Apr 23, 13 at 21:12

What about doing something like this... Open up a walkway to the front door and bring the colors of the house up to date. In your case grey may not work, but there are other tones that might compliment your roof color nicely. I agree about large columns but a railing might be too confining.

I agree with Victoria. Make a walkway to the door, and frame it with a couple of nice evergreens. Right now, the wide window on the right is the first thing I see, and that SHOULD be the front door.

Are the columns not evenly spaced, or is that an illusion? Our house had the columns narrower at the front door, and moving them even and making them bigger made a HUGE difference. OK, removing the gawd awful fluted aluminum ones and replacing them with big wooden ones made a huge difference.

Pretty house!
Nancy

I much prefer the curved walkway and porch in front of an expanded and curved plant bed in the pic Victoria G posted. In your pic if you look at the shadow of the tree in the foreground, the sunshine creates a natural outline for a new walkway that would lead directly to the front door. A larger outdoor sconce by the door will be great. Where that lone chair to the right of the door I'd put a large colorful planter. New seating to the left on your new porch.

I'd probably put round columns since you have so much vertical rectangular interest with the shutters. Rather than encasing all the columns, I'd talk with a structural engineer, architect or knowledgeable contractor about removing the center column in front of the garage and spanning the garage width with a supporting beam. Less visual clutter and safer. A series of indirect lighting behind the beam will be effective. The garage doors are black holes that detract. Easy fix is to paint whatever color your shutters will be.

I probably wouldn't introduce another stone on the porch as I'd spend my funds on creating a decorative brick border along the walkway and perhaps also the driveway. Wonderful four season new landscaping will go a long way toward enhancing your house. Remove the evergreens directly at the corner and extend another curved bed enough so that a flowering tree could be planted to frame the house.

My last suggestion is rather than adding trim around the door, consider upgrading the door and side lite to a 3/4 beveled glass mahogany unit. The sparkle will be lovely.

Thanks everyone for your postings. Here's a close up of the porch area.
The siding is aluminum and is a cream color.

Consider also painting the posts a darker color. It will help the eye to focus beyond the posts. Until we get around to beefing up our patio posts, darker paint was a noticeable improvement. The area is still a WIP, obviously. ;-)

It's the landscaping for me. You have those three green soldiers off to the right, and a gathing of sheared meatballs in front, all framing that one wide window. The front door is lost, as though it was an afterthought.

I would step way back and look at your photos again, and try to find ways to made the front door the star.

If this were my house, I would start by replacing/reworking the landscaping to make the front door the most prominent feature, then I would replace the door and asymmetrical sidelight with a much larger door with beefier trim. Change out the light for a much larger fixture in a higher contrast finish, and get a planter that's much bigger/taller.

Before I went to the expense of replacing the posts, I'd try making them disappear by painting them the color of the brick.

Thanks for everyone's comments.
The interlock walkway I probably won't be able to change but the landscaping I can see definitely needs redoing. It's gotten over grown and I've lost some shrubs in the walkway bed so its time anyway. The message I'm getting is to frame or emphasize the front door area which makes sense.

I'm also planning on changing the light fixture to a bigger maybe black fixture.
I would like to change the door to a different style but it may not be possible right now.

If you're not competing in a REALLY tough market, I don't think you need to do many drastic and expensive exterior changes.

Freshening up the landscaping would help. Adding a variety of bushes/trees with different textures would help. E.g. azaleas, smoke tree.

Fattening up the pillars and changing the color of the front door and shutters to a trendy shade would add pizzazz. Maroon and gray seem to be the trendy accent colors right now.

We just sold our house of 30 years - a colonial similar in style to yours with first floor brick and second floor white siding. We went with charcoal gray for the shutters and front door. We chose that shade because the brick had shades of gray in it and the realtor told us that gray was popular right now. Cost us only $30 for a gallon of SW Superpaint Exterior and a couple of days work to paint the door and shutters. Previously, we had a grayish teal color, but that really dated the house.

I don't know if gray would work with your house, but maroon might. You wouldn't think maroon would work with brick, but I've seen examples where it does very nicely.

Look at your shingles and bricks and see if there's a color going through them you might want to emphasize. Maybe even a grayish green might work.

Personally, I think as along as the exterior is clean, neat, and somewhat updated, that should be sufficient. I think it's the interior that really makes the sale.