give my shutters some love!

They're up!




And to refresh all of our memories, here is the outside of the house when we first saw it... no wonder it sat empty for a while!

the shutters where pretty much the same color as the stucco. The door mostly glass, a kind of spider-webby design. It didn't fit the style of the house or the neighborhood.

When I showed my hubby the MLS picture of this house he was not impressed, and he thought I was kind of nuts that I wanted to come and see it. We had some cute houses on our list.
Like this little cutie:


But the neighborhood just didn't feel right. And we had made that mistake once before. What I really wish is that I could have picked this house up and moved it to this neighborhood. I still mourn for this house. I really loved it. The craftsman style, the white trim, the fact that it was green clap board and shingle style siding (with board and batten style on the sides and back) and not stucco... Anyway, we really wanted a neighborhood with lots of kids, and that just wasn't happening there.

So let's shake that house out of our heads, shall we?? :)


We knew this was the right house for us before we even saw the inside. we drove the neighborhood and saw kids and families all over the place, an amazing park with a creek and tall trees, and lots of trails and green space... the first time we walked the neighborhood, we met so many friendly neighbors who where so welcoming. We felt like we were buying the neighborhood more than the house. We decided to make up for what the house was lacking with a lot of hard work.

A few weeks after moving in, I painted the shutters black with paint we already had from our old house. It looked better, but when we replaced the door it bugged me to have black shutters with the chestnut colored door...

Thus the shutter building project.



First off, I'm pretty proud of myself... I built them 90% all by myself. I had the hubbs cut a few of the pieces of wood once I got going to hurry things along, but I did everything else sans man-powers.


Hubby was proud. It turns him on when I use power tools.

He did do most of the work with hanging them, though. And that turned out to be a hard job.

Mostly, I'm pretty happy with the result. They make the house look a little more cottage-y and a little more rustic craftsman-y (yep, I just made those terms up.)

We took one down right after we got them up on Saturday, it needed some tweaking. The stones are uneven and it's been really hard to make it look perfect where they are mounted on the stone.

Here's my advice to anyone attempting something similar:
* note to self: it's really hard to attach anything to stone... the part where the stones where under the shutters took a really long time, and one still needed more work, so we took it down to tweak it a little. The stones are really uneven and making it hang just right has been interesting.

* choose a wood that is the same species as your door (if applicable) so they'll stain up the same.

* hope your hubby is as smart as mine when it comes to hanging things to the outside of your little stucco house. It really was a pain. He tried to do it the hard way, using all of the same holes from the old shutters and making a template for the screws in the new shutters, but the old ones where secured with plastic anchors and many of them broke off in the rock or stucco. In the end, we ended up filling the holes with special stucco filler/sealer and making new ones.

It turned out to be a most-of-the-day Saturday project, so I granted the Hubbs immunity from house projects for a week... he deserves it!

Now my sad little yard looks bare naked. We bought this house without a single tree on the property, all that had been done with landscape is grass in the front yard.

We've got a summer full of planting and yard work ahead of us!

For now, I'm just glad to have these up!

Total cost: about $83.00. I had the stain and everything else on hand, so the wood was the bulk of the cost. Not too shabby!

I'm linking up: