Bummer. I would remove the upper shutters and fill in the gaps in the lower and paint it to match/blend the brick color like a SW Polished Mahogany.

Im guessing larger windows are not a possibility?

What was the contractor's suggestion? He had you remove them without a plan?

Here's a remodeled colonial that could provide you with some inspiration.

Use wider siding. The siding / shutter color is more interesting when the contrast is less IMO

You might discuss with your contractor about the possibility of doing something like this where you'd build out the window.

Odd there is no brick under the shutters since they are usually added after siding. The part below the windows should be the same as the siding but IMO white is not the color I would choose for siding if possible to change . Remove at least the upper shutters for sure . I like agrayed green or even a darker gray for siding much better that the white

Put the shutters and panels back… it’s the only thing that will look logical. (Well larger windows would be awesome)

I think just a "bigger window" to take up the entire space might just be too big, and the house with no shutters at all starts to get a little bland looking maybe.(LEFT)

On the other hand a Longer window, if possible, and a wider shutter that covers more than just the gap that was underneath it, may be a decent option. (RIGHT)

This is a colonial revival house from the 1960s. It's not an accurate colonial house. It never was designed to be one. No, double windows never had shutters. (Well actually they did, they had big bifold shutters, four leaves total, two on each side if necessary). So, you have a house that has too narrow shutters on double windows. Totally inaccurate, except that is what the house was designed like, just like thousands of others. People liked modern floor plans, people didn't like modern exteriors all that much. So this is the "traditional" they came up with, and it was very popular. I think you could remove every bit of vintage charm it has trying to compensate for the "dated", "flawed" shutter design.

What is the green stuff on the walls beneath the shutters?

I'm suspicious the windows originally were larger, possibly bay windows, and the shutters are a kluge to get around the smaller, cheaper replacement windows. It doesn't mean the original windows didn't have shutters.

Unfortunately, what is going to keep this house perpetually in the sixties is the white siding.

Actually I have seen this sort of things a number of times where there is a "shutter" set into the brick, instead of sitting on top of the brick. There was a builder in my area who did this in the 1950s and 1960s in a development near where I lived.

This was a more straight-on view so I was able to remove all the shutters and expand the windows to fill the space left by the shutter removal around the old windows.

I don't know, it makes the first floor windows so big, that they seem out of scale for this style of house, and it looks a little bland on the second floor. I am not loving it.

Are triple windows better? I don't know the overall size of the opening is still big. This is more of a Dutch Colonial Revival window arrangement, but the house isn't Dutch colonial.

Here's a similar design to your home although you don't have the 2nd floor overhang that this one does:

It’s not a kludge (well it’s a design kludge) tons of mid century ranches had the panels and fixed shutters bricked around. Totally weird but period.

What did you end up doing? I have this same exact issue, and I am struggling to find any examples of how other people fixed this without replacing the windows.

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