It's That Time of the Month

You know, the time when I finally get around to adding a post on this blog. And this month, there's a picture, to boot!

My husband was given these plantation shutters at work for free a few months ago. There were 5 sets, and we couldn't pass them up. We have p. shutters downstairs, but we've never had the money to do the upstairs. Unfortunately, these shutters were too tall and slightly too narrow for the upstairs windows. But I figured I'd try to make them fit anyway, at least in my daughter's room, because I had nothing to lose--except time, that is.

So I researched online and found that you can trim the height of shutters but not the width. After I measured the windows and the shutters, I realized that it would be impossible to trim these enough to make them fit inside the window height-wise. If I did, I would be cutting into the spine that opens and closes them. But the shutters were too narrow horizontally to install them outside the window frame. So I decided to do a little fudging.

I trimmed the panels' height on my table saw (which worked great, by the way) as much as I could feasibly take off. Then, I set them on the window sill and determined how much width I had to add. I cut, primed, and painted 1x3's to make side braces. I had to have braces in there anyway to screw the shutters to. Then I nailed the braces to the window frame interior, being careful not to hit the window itself. (I tried screws at first, but the frame wasn't thick enough to take the screw.)

Installing the left shutter wasn't too bad, though I quickly discovered that I had to remove the hinge pin and screw in one side of the hinge separately because the adjacent shelves prevented me from opening the shutter flush with the wall. But the right side turned out to be a real pain. And it's not done yet. I've still got the top hinge to install (there are 3 on each side). And when I was marking it today, I realized that my support brace is a hair off at the top--just enough to make the top of the shutter hit the top of the window trim. That, in turn, means the hinge won't lie flat on the brace. There's a 1/8" gap, or thereabouts. Argghhh!

Once it's all done, though, you won't notice that the shutters are fitted inside the window frame horizontally but outside the frame vertically. That's because the top of the shutters obscures the top trim. And once we have curtains up, the sides will be covered, too.

Then, I'll be ready to add the top, over-the-window shelf. I've primed and painted it, but since it's really two pieces of wood, I want to borrow my colleague's biscuit cutter to affix them to each other smoothly. Then, it's on to the crown molding!!!

I'm optimistic this will all be done by Christmas :-)