Let me just start by saying…I have NO IDEA why we did not do this so much sooner. I’m just going to come right out with this before and after:
BAM! Now that’s a house! As you can guess, we decided to revamp the entire look of our house, but we had no idea it would have this big of an impact. It was definitely time to say goodbye to that dingy purple and hello to some bold shutters that pop. The results with this project were overwhelming to us. And the steps we took to get there were super simple. I give you…
How to Give Your House a Facelift
If eyes are the window to the soul then the shutters on these windows must be eyelashes and we just applied the blackest of the black, most voluminous mascara on the market! These shutters are seriously popping. Our neighbors have all taken notice and everyone agrees – they look great! And this shutter project only cost us about $100. How, you ask?
We bought several cans of matte black spray paint from Lowe’s and Home Depot. Lowe’s is our home improvement store of choice but they only had a few cans of Valspar Color Radiance in the matte black we wanted, so when we needed more spray paint, we had to run to Home Depot and ended up with several cans of Rustoleum Painter’s Touch, also in matte black of course. Both of these spray paints are fine for indoor/outdoor use, are heat and water resistant and quick drying for sure.
We started with the back and side of the house because we figured if something went wrong, at least it wouldn’t be visible to all passers-by. We removed each shutter, one-by-one, cleaned them with an all-purpose cleaner and laid them out on a tarp, slightly elevated thanks to several rogue bricks we had laying around.
From there, we sprayed each of the shutters once, letting them dry for just 1 minute and then sprayed a second coat. The drying time was so fast, even with all that New Jersey humidity lingering in the air. Once the shutters were completely dry, we hung each back in their positions. We numbered the back of each one according to their position on the house going from left to right so putting them back up was a cinch. That’s it! So easy and the spray paint only cost about $3 – $4 a can. This whole portion of the project took about one full day to complete.
The front of the house is where things got a little tricky. The day after we completed the back and side of the house, we began to tackle the front. We removed every shutter, numbered the backs, cleaned them with an all-purpose cleaner and spray painted shutter #1 when we realized, these shutters juts weren’t going to cut it. Many of them had holes in them and for the most part they had all seen better days. The quality also just wasn’t there. The shutters in the back of the house were so much nicer than the ones on the front of the house (which actually doesn’t surprise us at all because that’s just how things go around here). We decided we were going to have to change our plans and purchase new shutters for the front – that’s 6 new shutters.
Here we are thinking each of these shutters would run us around $30 a piece…not true! As it turns out, shutters are sold in pairs (why didn’t I think of that?) and it cost about $30 per pair, so around $90 total. That, with the spray paint, this entire project cost us around $100 to complete and the results are priceless (or at least we think so).
In short, we purchased the new shutters and spent just another hour or two to get them positioned on the house with no trouble at all. The new ones even came with cool little snap covers for the screws, so the end product is clean, sophisticated and really gives that buttoned up look we were aiming for.
If you’re looking to give your house a facelift, refinishing or replacing shutters is definitely a great place to start. We refinished the shutters that were in decent shape and replaced the ones that just weren’t going to cut it and it really paid off.
You may have also noticed we painted the door and that’s a whole separate blog post so stay tuned to learn more about the color and the story behind it.
Fresh Nest Blog 