I don’t know about you, but I love the look of shutters. They just frame windows so beautifully! Once day when I’m all grown up and have built my dream house, there are going to be shutters everywhere. In the meantime though, they will just have to remain in my decor. That’s better than nothing, right?!

This was another of those projects where I told Hubs that I needed shutters. To flank a mirror. Some days I’m amazed that I don’t get more eye-rolls from him! I mean, I’ve made him work hard on my crazy projects… faux card catalog ring a bell?! But no, he just went with it; aren’t I lucky?!

We, yes we, made these very inexpensively. A very important point for this very budget-conscious family!

To recreate these shutters, you will need:

• Untreated pine planks (we bought the 2400 mm planks; 400 mm wide)
• Tee hinges
• Screws
• 40 grit sand paper

We used the following tools:

• Drill
• Mitre Saw
• Orbital sander
• G-clamp (if desired)

To start, measure the size of the shutter that you want. We went with 1000 mm tall, 400 mm wide (so 4 planks wide).

Cut your planks down to size (in our case, 1000 mm). We were making 2 shutters, so needed 8 1000 mm planks.

Cut your supports down to size; we needed 4 at 400 mm long. I used the width of the shutter to make sure that the support was cut to the correct length.

At this point, I sanded all the pieces down with 40 grit sandpaper using our orbital sander. This was because the untreated pine was very rough. If you used treated or pre-sanded pine, you might need to give them a light sand, but nothing like I had to!

Line you planks up and screw in your supports.

If you would like to create the “Z” look, measure out on an additional plank where you would need to make your cuts. Set your mitre saw to the relevant angle and make your cuts. I needed to sand these down as well, because – untreated pine.

Once done, attach your hinges, as per the directions on the packaging.

At this point, I was quite happy to hang these as faux shutters on the wall; Hubs however wasn’t so keen on drilling into the wall. So he took it a step farther. As always! He hung the shutters on the frame of the mirror – they are now fully functioning decorative shutters!

That’s it! I’m still trying to decide if I want to paint them… I would love your input! Leave them natural, stain them, or paint them? What do you think?