Thank you, I appreciate the feedback.

maybe just paint the bottom a gray...

Painting the foundation causes a maintenance problem forever after. I agree with flairlighting to concentrate on improving the landscaping and skipping the shutters. Put up some real house numbers, remove the dinky flower boxes, and paint the trim. Clean gutters and wash windows until they sparkle. It'll look great.

Hi there - I'm not crazy about the shutter idea, but mostly because brown and yellow are a really poor combination - especially on thishouse that has some cottage / farmhouse charm. A yellowhouse with a golden brown roof is fine, but addingmore brown is a poor idea. Flair is right though, that you don't have the width on the wall adjacent to thewindows to really make shutters wide enough toclose over the full window look good. If you are spending a little to freshen your curb appeal, I think that shutters and foundationpaint are a poor place to start but an easy place for a contractor to do something quick/cheap.

I see that you may have some discoloration where the original shutters around the far right windows were - if you need to put shutters back up to hide that, use white or dark royal shutters - it is going to provide a sort of cottage feeling which is the most classic curb appeal for this place. Yellow houses really appeal to men, you may do better than you think.

If you are selling, and just working to make the house more attractive to buyers, then you are probably uninterested in pouring a wrap around concrete porch with new stairs - that could add up too. My advice for the least cost, most attractive solution: ignore the foundation paint altogether. Washing the house may require trim touch up - keep that all white and fill the window boxes with silk variegated ivy that trails over the edge - no watering needed.

Get some large scale classichouse numbers (black) and put them up to the right of the windows near the right corner of the house where you come up the walk. take the uglyhouse number sign out of the front window . .

Unless you can replace it, mask around the wrought iron railing and use rustoleum in black in 7 - 9 soft misting coats torestore a consistent finish there.

Paint the front door a cheerful cottage blue - bm franklin lakes is a nice one - http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/franklinlakes#ce_s=franklin la

If you do new shutters - go twosteps darker for the blue (this is just a royal navy - historic color tho so they call it green - bm newburg green http://www.benjaminmoore.com/en-us/paint-color/newburggreen

That will make the house feel a little loved, feel welcoming. No one will notice the foundation color. Fresh white will call attention, matching yellow is the right answer if you do anything.

For the price of foundation paint, you could put up a gable bracket on the front that would add some simple farmhouse charm - painted white of course - prowoodmarket.com . . . a simple one http://www.prowoodmarket.com/gable-bracket-40.html

Planting this time of year is more successful than you would think - concentrate on half evergreens and half flowering shrubs for when spring comes.

i was thinking a wood little porch.........but yes all of the above is basically what i was saying.

Flair reminds me - a deck with nice white (wood, trex or vinyl) railing on some new stairs that come off the front of the house would want to reach to the left of the largerwindow (if you arechanging windows then we do need to talk - with some simple choices you could add a lot of charm with upper sash muntins, switching the "picture" window back to a trio of single hungs and opting for colonial window grids on top. You didn't ask about windows, so I assume you are just doing exterior cosmetics based on that. Here's a photo - not a covered porch, just an extended area before the door - I would recommend only one set of stairs but wrap it across the picture window. See how black iron lanterns, brown roof, yellow siding and white trim works together? Note that the bronze (berry toned) maple foliage is particularly appealing here where they used some red brick / trex decking to good effect.