Folk Art Shutters

"The Burrow is the home of the Weasleys.
It's located outside of Ottery St. Catchpole

and it looks as if it's held together with magic

- which it probably is.

Harry describes it as the best house he's ever been in."

―J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

INSPIRATION

I loved this description of the Weasley's house and I wanted my house to appear as if it's held together by magic too.  In my mind, there was no better way to achieve that goal than to add folk-art-painted shutters!

I have been thinking about this project for many years.  There are a couple houses in Cincinnati that have them and I admire them every time I pass by.  Then a year ago my friend Margot put beautiful, hand-painted shutters on her house (you can see her lovely shutters here) and it inspired me to finally start on my own shutter project.

"A building without ornamentation is like a heaven without stars."

―George Sandys

SHUTTERS

I thought about making the shutters myself, but knew that might add months to the project.  In September of 2021, I purchased shutters from Exterior Solutions.  I was so nervous to get the size right because we have two wood supports for the dormer on either side of the window.  So the shutter absolutely had to fit inside of those supports.  I made cardboard mockups to make sure I got the size right.

The shutters sat in their boxes all winter and spring.  Finally in mid-June of 2022 we pulled them out and painted them the same grey-brown as the window moulding.  Note the quality control feline supervisor in the background.  

DESIGN

I knew I wanted to use elements from the design I painted on my back porch door in 2017 (you can see it here).  So I pulled up that file in Illustrator and started playing with different designs.  

In the end it came down to the following two designs below. 

The nice thing about Illustrator is that you can make everything to full scale.  So I knew once I finalized the design I could print them out and place them on the shutters to make sure everything fit.  Below you can see both designs taped to the shutters. 

I was having a hard time deciding so I photoshopped them onto the house.  I posted these options to Facebook and got a lot of feedback which was about 50/50 either way.  Sometimes the feedback can be helpful for me to figure out which way I am leaning.  I was already feeling a nudge towards "scrunched" when Margot said that traditionally you don't paint the batten.  That was all I needed to hear.

The winner was "scrunched"!

STENCIL

Once that decision was made I prepared the files to send to my friend Tiffany who has a laser cutter.  Below you can see what the files look like that I sent her.

And here is a short video of the stencil being cut.  The laser cuts through the Mylar like butter.  (Thank you for the video Tiffany!)

PAINTING THE STENCIL

It was fun to place that first stencil onto the shutter.  

After painting the very first layer of white it became clear I was going to need multiple layers to make it opaque...especially for the white.  I ended up painting at least 4 layers on every stencil.  That meant I had to let the stencil dry 4 times and that it would be extra "sticky". Below is a video of me pulling the stencil off the first time.

(Music by Scott Holmes, "Victoria")

As you can see from the video, the stencil "leaked."  Luckily it was fixable.  I was going to say it was easy to fix, but that would be a lie.  I spent a lot of time touching the stencils up afterwards.  Below you can see before and after touch up.

But to help with the "leaking" problem I did try something I'd  heard about a long time ago.  I painted the grey/brown background color onto the stencil first.  This helped prevent the color from leaking under the stencil.  It really did help quite a bit and even though it required an extra coat, I highly recommend taking the extra time.

Another thing I did to help with "leakage," was to scrape my stencil edges clean after every shutter.  Below you can see a photo of that process.  It may have been easier to use mineral spirits, but I didn't have any.  So my fingernails got worn down until I found an old credit card that worked just as well.

It felt so good to finish painting and touching up all the shutters.  Bubo was excited about it too.

CLEAR COAT (VARATHANE DAY!)

I wasn't sure I was going to even do this step.  But when I pulled the stencils off sometimes the paint would pull up a little bit and I would push it down with my fingers.  In order to secure everything I decided to spray the shutters with exterior water-based Varathane.   I used this product on my Hex Sign project and it has worked well (click here to see and for further discussion about clear coat options).  I sprayed 3-4 coats and called them done!

HANGING THE SHUTTERS

I finished painting the shutters mid-week and figured we would hang the shutters the following weekend.  Unfortunately I discovered I hadn't ordered enough hinges.  I originally ordered the hinges the previous year from Larson Shutters and was worried it would be hard to get them again with all the pandemic shortages.  Lucky for us, I found the same ones again and they arrived within a week.

During the week we were waiting on the new hinges we made a mockup of window moulding out of an old piece of wood that was about the same size.  I wish I had taken a photo of that step because you could see how many time we failed.  I thought I was going to lose my mind trying to get the hinge placement just right so that the weight would be evenly distributed between the two hinges.  I made paper templates to scale in Illustrator probably 5 times trying to get it just right.  

When it came time to actually hang the shutters we used a life-sized template with holes in it that we placed on the lower edge of the window.  I happened to have this weird "plastic-y" cardboard I had purchased to prevent the cats from jumping over the baby gates and it was the perfect material and stiffness for a template.

We also learned from making our wood moulding mockup that unfortunately we would not be able to close the shutters.  For some reason, George had his heart set on the shutters closing.  I think he pictured himself opening the shutters every morning to sing with the birds 😄.  We wrapped our heads around it and tried all sorts of things, but in the end we had to give that up.  When we tried to close the shutter, the batten would hit the moulding.  I would have had to order hinges that had a long pintel arm if we wanted them to close...and I didn't want the angle of the shutters to be too great or you wouldn't see the design. 

“We're in this life together, tethered to each other, fumbling and trying to find our way...”

— Daniell Koepke

The day of the shutter hanging we tethered George with an old faded-pink climbing rope and out he went onto the roof.  It was so nerve wracking that I didn't take any photos.  He was tethered to me and I kept having visions of me being sucked tight against the window if he fell.  Thank goodness all went well!  And thank goodness for washers!  Even with all my planning we still needed to use washers to make sure the weight was evenly distributed between the two hinges.

Once the shutters were done we still had to secure the shutters with shutter dogs.  (I also purchased the shutter dogs from Larson Shutters - here is the link).   

The only problem was they didn't come with an anti-rattle or anti-vibration bracket.  I ended up ordering that from Martell Hardware and it arrived within a week (link here).  I liked this bracket in particular because it allowed us to control the angle of the shutter against the house.  I wanted them almost parallel to the house because sometimes shutters can look droopy if they are pushed all the way back; plus I wanted the design to be fully visible.  We ended up buying 6 inch lag bolts (instead of using the 4 1/2 inch ones that came with them) in order to have enough room for the anti-vibration brackets.

Above you can see the shutter dogs installed.  Normally people put them below the shutter and they stick up.  They are designed to rotate easily when closing the shutter and the weight of the larger scroll will automatically pull the shutterdog back into vertical place.  However we had flashing below the window that we didn't want to drill into.  We ended up placing ours to the side and both the batten and the anti-vibration bracket helped keep it in place.

Below you can see George rejoicing after installing the shutter dogs and the job was finally, truly done!

This project might win the prize for longest from start to finish, but it really was satisfying to see how the shutters transformed the house.  When I pull into the driveway and see them it brings me joy every time.

I usually like to end my posts with some deep thoughts about life.  But this time I just want to say, "Do things that bring you joy."  That's it... sweet and simple.

 A big thank you to Tiffany for cutting the stencils for this project.  And a huge thank you to George for not only putting up with my crazy projects, but for helping me complete them.  I couldn't do any of this without your love and support and delicious cooking.

"Decorating golden rule: Live with what you love."
―Unknown