When we moved to this house, four years ago, it was the perfect opportunity for me to take an older (1989) farmhouse and update it with some modern farmhouse styles that we discovered we both love.
Each year, we have selected a few DIY projects to work on. One project we completed this summer, was making and installing faux window shutters.
As I usually do before a project, I spent time on Pinterest looking for window shutter ideas. There were so many and none were really exactly what we wanted so my husband and I decided to combine a few ideas to make a design that was our own.
For a number of reasons, we used cedar boards to make our window shutters. Cedar is easy to find here, fairly inexpensive, and it holds up well in our environment. Cedar also has that rough-worn wood look that I wanted.
Before we began, we measured our windows and decided on our desired height and width for the window shutters. We also decided we liked the look of three vertical boards with a horizontal board near the top and bottom.
After deciding on a pattern, actually making the window shutters was fairly easy. We cut the vertical boards to length, for us that was 61 inches. Then we cut the horizontal boards to length, which was 18 inches. We lined up the boards and used a nail gun to secure the horizontal boards in place on the vertical boards.
Once we had all the window shutters assembled, I applied a stain to them. We chose to use Varathane Premium Wood Stain in Briarsmoke. We liked the look that one coat of this stain gave us; it covered the wood without hiding the grain of the wood.
After the stain had dried, my husband used two-inch long screws to secure the window shutters to the outside of the house.
This project was super easy, only took a weekend, and made a huge improvement on the curb appeal of our house…plus it gave my husband and I a project that we could work on together.
Our house project to-do list is like a mile long. I am happy to have one more project completed.
Hello, my name is Laurie. My family and I live near the Oregon coast. When we aren’t at work, in school, or on the volleyball court, we enjoy traveling, cheering for our favorite sports teams, playing outdoors, and checking off items on our bucket list. We are lucky in that both sets of our parents, as well as our siblings and their families, live within an hour of us. We get together often to help one another out, celebrate milestones, and go on adventures together.
I love your shutters they came out well. I do have to giggle at a 1989 being an ‘old’ farm house (sorry). In our neck of the woods that would be very modern! Most of the old farm houses especially two story are pre 1900! I love yours though and it does look like the older homes but I bet tons better insulated!
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What a beautiful farmhouse, I love it! Your window shutters turned out really good, thank you so much for sharing. 🙂