Shutter Work

  About six years ago I made some shutters for the windows on the south side of the house and a set for one of the bedroom windows on the west side.  I made the shutters out of cedar wood and covered them with a marine type spar varnish.    This picture to the right is the set that is on the west bedroom window.  I know,  shutters are not in style anymore and if they are - they come in plastic so you don't have to worry about them deteriorating over time.    I am one of the few houses left in our little housing complex that still has wood siding on the house and shutters on the windows.   (Also, everybody else has a dog - I just have a cat.)

   The shutters on the south side of the house are exposed to more sunlight than the west ones.  This spring we noticed that they were starting to show that it was time to either give them a little loving attention or toss em in a bond fire.   I was hoping that I could use the same process that I used when I cleaned up the deck a couple weeks ago.   I removed them from the house and applied the "deck stripper" product to them.    Then I got out the power washer and tried to clean them up.   I was a little disappointed that it did not work as well on the shutters as it did on the deck.  

     That marine varnish is a good product and once the shutters were clean there were still traces of varnish on the boards.    So out comes the sanders and sand paper and I started to do my most favorite thing (not) - sanding.   I tried to take the varnish off so that all that was left was the bare wood.   Of course the six year old cedar was now weathered and did not look as pretty as it once did.   (This is when I start thinking that plastic shutters look pretty nice and improve your property value.   Wood shutters make for a nice camp fire.)

     My next step was to retreat to the cellar and see if I could come up with a cedar like stain.    I did and  I stained those shutters to try to make them look like new.    This time I applied a spar varnish which is a varnish that will stand up to the outside weather, but not a marine type varnish.    We will see if we get another six years out of this wood.   (There are starting to be so many things that are in my "we'll see if list" that I think I should be putting more stuff down in a notebook.")

     There they are.   The only ones in the whole neighborhood.    Oh well, the wife likes em and  that is what counts.   (Look at the way she holds that dumb cat.   If only I could get as much attention as that cat gets.)

  I hope everyone is having a fun summer.