DIY Rustic Shutters

While we were installing cement board throughout the kitchen and dining room this weekend, I found myself spending a lot of time outside looking over my yard. I was doing the measuring and cutting, and J was mixing and spreading mortar. Since spreading the mortar takes much more time than cutting and is really a one man job, I decided to find a few small projects to fix up the yard. 

One thing that I've always thought would spruce up our detached carport is shutters. There is one sad little window into the shed portion of the carport, and it's just there. Every time I look at it, I imagine a cute little bench beneath the window surrounded by cute shutters and bright little pots. With my waiting time, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to make that happen! 

This past spring, we cleared out most of the shed which hadn't been done in forever. I mean, ever. So, that left us with tons of garbage which we slowly put out with the trash one bag at a time. However, this also left us with over 100 cans of rotten, moldy, rusty paint cans since J's brother used to own a painting company and also used to use the shed for storage. They've been stacked next to the carport as we let the mostly empty ones dry out, and needless to say, it has not been a pretty sight. 

So, I removed the paint cans, raked and leveled the ground, cleaned and stored the wood with the rest of our wood, then got to building my shutters! 

Fortunately, I already had enough wood for this project along with the exterior screws and wood stain, so I started by measuring the height of my window. This specific window is 39" tall, so I made my shutters 40" tall to give an extra half an inch to the top and bottom to make sure they don't end up looking too small. To determine how many pieces of wood I would need, I measured the width of the window (which was 30") and decided that each shutter should be 15" wide so that they are properly proportioned with the window itself. If you have the room, I think you should always make each shutter half the width of the window so that if they were real shutters instead of decorative, you would be able to fully enclose the window. This is what will give them an authentic shutter look. 

I measured the boards that I had on hand (2x4 furring strips) and decided that 4 boards would be closest to 15" across. I then put two more boards across those 4, marked, and cut them. 

Before attaching everything, I sanded the edges of all of the boards that I just cut to make them look more finished. The boards on the right of the photo below are sanded, and those on the left are not. They just look more finished that way, right? 

I then ran some wood glue across the cross boards and let them dry a bit so that they would hold together once I screwed them in. Next came the screws! I made sure to use exterior screws so that they wouldn't deteriorate with the weather. 

For this step, I didn't mind if the screws showed from the front because I was going for "rustic" anyways, so I screwed right into the front of the shutter into each board. 

I then used Rustoleum Dark Walnut wood stain and a paint brush and simply brushed it into every crevice. 

After letting them dry for a few hours, I screwed them right into the side of the shed with 2.5" exterior screws. 

Now, this overall project isn't quite finished, but the shutters look fantastic. They make the window look larger and just add a cute rustic touch that had been missing before. Once they've dried a bit more, I'll brush them with a coat of clear sealer. 

To add to this project, I've sprayed a plastic bench and three hanging pots which I'll post as soon as I have them hung!

Bottle Cap Wind Chime

I have been collecting beer caps for a looong time. Being a total pack rat, I find myself collecting anything that is colorful, abundant, and has relative similarities between pieces.

Beer caps are fantastic.

During every party we've had over the last few years, I've put out the cap bowl, and attempted to collect every beer cap that popped in my house. Now, after a few beers, the attention to detail just isn't there to get a group of party people to drop their caps in a designated bowl, so I'd bet that I've only successfully collected about a fifth of the caps I should have. However, that only makes the caps that I DO have even more fun. As I sifted through them for this project, I noticed that I wasn't even sure what kind of beer some of them were. Then, there was the occasional Bud Light Lime cap which brought back memories of the only night we brought those home. Apparently, I threw in a couple of our Johnnie Walker caps in as we finished off a bottle of Black Label which I don't recall doing, but I'm glad that I did. Looking at those caps, I knew that this wind chime would serve as a personal "drunk history" of sorts - bringing up stories and reminding us of fun nights gone by.

I started by sorting through the caps to make sure that I had a nice variety of brands.

Then, I lined them up on the coffee table to see how they would look next to each other once they were attached. I ended up rearranging all of them based on color so that the yellow lemon beer caps, green lime caps, blue Sam Adams caps, and black Guinness caps were spread out to create a nice random feel and to avoid getting any spots that were too dark or too bright in one clump.

Next, I grabbed my tools:

- a scrap piece of 2x4 I had out in the shed
- pliers
- needle nose pliers
- a wire cutter
- my drill and 3/32 drill bit
- 10mm safety wire
- about 80 bottle caps
- a handful of shiny plastic beads I've had FOREVER but wasn't quite sure what to do with

To begin assembly, you'll want to make sure to grip your bottle caps with pliers while you drill. I started by just holding them down with my hands, but as we've all learned at one point or another, bottle caps can be deceivingly sharp. Also, you shouldn't put your fingers that close to a moving drill bit.

 

Drill two holes into each cap. Attempt to put the holes directly across from each other so that the cap will hang straight once it's attached to the wire. 

*Drilling through metal is different than drilling through wood. It does not take even pressure and drill slowly through until you reach the other side. Just pick a spot, start drilling, and it will suddenly punch through the metal. 

I didn't bother paying attention to which direction the holes would cause the caps to hang because the color placement was more important to me, but if having all of your caps facing the correct way is important to you, then I would suggest marking all of your hole spots with a sharpie before drilling so that you don't drop the ball in the middle of the project. When you're looking at the back of something like 80 caps, it's easy to mix up the direction of the faces. 

The holes will be kind of jagged, so I recommend using gloves. I noticed the day after completing this project that my fingers had tiny scratches and tears on them which could have easily been avoided with gloves. I'm much more of a "hind sight is 20/20" kind of person when it comes to DIY projects. Once I get an idea, I tend to just jump on it without much prepping or safety consideration. However, I do NOT recommend doing your projects that way. Always consider safety first! Do as I say, not as I do, right? :)

Once I had holes in all of the caps that I planned to use, I cut about 90 pieces of safety wire at about 4.5" long each. Then, I fed one end of a piece of wire into one hole from the back of the cap. Take the wire and wrap it around itself until it creates a nice tight spiral.

Then, use the needle nose pliers to grab that end of the wire and crimp in into the coil so it doesn't catch on anything. I then slid a bead onto the end of the wire, turned the whole thing around and attached the other side of the wire to another bottle cap the exact same way as this one. This means you are only using one wire in between each cap, and I only put a bead on every other wire or so.

For my hanger, I got really lucky. We are in the process of renovating our kitchen, and I ended up with an extra metal pole from a cabinet. So, I grabbed that, ran a string through each hole in the pole, and then ran some wire through the entire pole to hang it!

I absolutely adore this wind chime. Now, I will admit that it doesn't make the musical sound of a standard wind chime, but the caps do make a cute little metallic clink as they tap each other in the wind. I also love how bright and colorful it is, which is hard to come by in our yard since we don't have a lot of flowering plants back there. Overall, it's a super cheerful, easy project that takes a little bit of time to put together but is completely worth it.

I love sitting in the sun and thinking about all of the good times those caps facilitated :)