My $14 Indoor Window Shutters

I wanted shutters for the downstairs bathroom and found an online company that did really terrific custom work...but they weren't cheap.  And the shipping cost was crazy.


I have a very strong aversion to anything expensive.  I'd rather spend money on experiences and having fun together instead of stuff.

The shutters I was interested in were really very simple - just plain wood panels, stained or painted, with primitive-style star cut outs.  The cut outs weren't very important to me and the design was ridiculously simple so I knew it was a project I could totally do.

So, off to Home Depot I went...



$14 later I had what I needed:
(1) 1x6x8 pine board, cut down to the 4 panels I needed
(2) pkgs of black hinges

It's fabulous that Home Depot cuts lumber for you. Normally JP will do my cutting but I wanted to do this project completely on my own and I wanted it done before he got home from work.  You just find a Home Depot person and ask them to make your cuts.  I needed (4) 19" pieces.  It took the guy about two minutes and the cutting was free.

I already had the black glaze that I wanted to use so no extra expense there.  By the way, the glaze that I used is called General Finishes Pitch Black glaze and it's amazing.  It's not cheap at about $15.99 for a pint, but it's worth it. A little goes a really long way. You can buy it here.

These are my boards after I finished glazing them.  Note: I used the glaze like paint and I know that's not really how you're supposed to use glaze but don't worry about rules. Nothing fun ever comes from following them anyway. This glaze gives the wood such a wonderful, silky finish.  I could have used my old standby - my chalk paints, which I adore - but I wanted the finish that the glaze gives.  Chalk paint would work really well on these though, too.

You can see above that I started to use my hand sander to distress the edges.
Yes, it is MY hand sander but for some reason I always seem to have to go looking for it and always find it in my husband's garage next to some project he's working on.  And I do recall that he scoffed at me when I purchased it.  That's okay, though...I use his drill all the time so we're even.  You know it's true love when you share your power tools with each other.  :-)

So the custom shutters I had been considering ordering had cut out stars but since the cut out part wasn't important to me, I decided to just paint stars on mine...

I outlined the stars...

...then painted them, using chalk paint.

Next I added the hinges.

And - voila! - we have shutters!

The finished product is not hinged to the actual window casing.  You could easily attach them but I didn't find it to be necessary.  I can still adjust them with them simply resting on the sill.  The thought of drilling holes into the actual window made me shudder.  (Ha, that was an unintentional pun.)

All in all, they took me about 3 hours start to finish but I had interruptions...phone calls, dogs that needed to be played with, etc.
Happily, the shutters did get done before JP got home ♥

Don't be intimidated about doing stuff like this. If you screw it up, so what? That's how you learn.
It's easy to just go buy and pay too much money for stuff; it's way more fun to do it yourself.