Today's Before and After: Every Home's Mascara

A home's exterior tells a lot about its family.
It says, "We are tidy", "We are colorful", "We are traditional", or even
"Hey, we grow a lot of pot"--something our home screamed to the neighborhood...


There was no denying that our home was lacking in the curb-appeal department when we bought the place just over a year ago.



We revamped our exterior with a fresh coat of Valspar's "Smokey Slate" and crisp "Bistro White" trim. However, our windows, the eyes of our home, needed a little mascara.


We opted for DIY shutters since, you know, we are DIY people. I loved the country look of board and batten shutters, particularly since it seemed everyone in the entire neighborhood seems to own just simple store-bought shutters. Best of all, the grand total for four sets of shutters came to less than $75 start to finish!


We bought furring strips from Lowes at around $1.50 each (sorry, we forgot the hard numbers!) and we measured each window to figure out how wide and tall each shutter should be. We went with four boards per shutter, with two braces; except for upstairs which only has three boards to fit the narrow window. The basic rule is to have the shutter extend to about half the length of the window; that is, unless they are functional, then they should be the same size as the window to cover it.


Brandon measured each window and then cut a guide board to measure the other cuts from. This is important to insure that each progressive cut is not changing from the original size. Then, he used nuts (not the food, the metal ones--bad joke.) to space the boards before drilling guide holes for the braces. Once the holes were set and any rough cuts were sanded down, he applied a little liquid nails to the brace and screwed in the pieces.



Then I got to do the fun part of priming and painting everything. Here's a hint: if you DIY these, paint, or at least prime after cutting/sanding, but before assembly... those cracks are tricky!

Then to hang our shutters in our stucco we used a masonry drill bit to drill holes before adding caulk and molly bolts. Then each shutter had four screws inserted into the molly bolts for extra security.

Then voila! There's our home with new mascara making it pretty as can be.


It sure has come a long way in the last year...