Project: Window Shutters

The front of our house needed something to lighten it up.  Our door was white and no window had any shutters on it.  We first colored our front door with a "dragonfly" color, a darker blue that spoke the Americana theme we were going for.  We added some rust-colored barn stars (to symbolize good luck/fortune), repainted our rocking chairs (from forest green to white), and added a white screen door, but the front office window still needed something.  SHUTTERS!

After checking out Menard's (and other places) we found shutters to be really expensive.  So I thought, why not build our own?  We settled on an old barn/country style and thought the same dragonfly color would match well.  So I bought some hard-wood lumbar (had it shipped from Menard's, which came surprisingly fast!) and began working!

I started making frames.  The width of the frame should be exactly 1/2 the width of the window.  So two shutters put together effectively doubles the width of the window.  I also opted to making them the exact height of the window.  Some shutters exceed the height, but I didn't feel this look warranted that method.  Using a chop saw, I cut 45º angle on all sides.  Putting a little Gorilla wood glue between them, and placing a joining square over them, I used 7/16" screws to fasten them down.  This also provides a padding on all four corners to help mount the frame to the siding.

A box of screws like this was more than enough for this project...

I then began putting the back slabs vertically across the frames.  Since this was the backside, I didn't need to keep them all even (which is obvious in the next picture...).  A dab of wood glue and a screw on each end kept them in place pretty well.
One important note!  When working with hard wood like this, especially screwing in so close to the end, it was very important to pre-drill holes before sinking the screw in.  Otherwise the boards would split and ruin the board.

Above you can see I also put screws across the middle (in the back) as they sank into the center board going horizontally across the shutter.

Two completed shutters ready for paint!

Here's the front of the shutters completed and ready for paint!  We used the same "dragonsfly" exterior color from Olympic.  A quarter gallon was plenty for these two shutters.

Here's after two coats, which was definitely needed.  But the color turned out wonderful!

And the finished product!  I mounted them with 2.5" construction screws (one on each corner on the inside of the outer-frame) and touched up the screw heads with a dab of paint (so you can't see them).  All together we saved over 60% of the cost of shutters if we would have purchased them in store (plus they didn't give us the exact size as an option for our small window).  Sure, this is only 1 of 15 windows we could do, but it's a start!