Herringbone Shutter

This was a really fun project! I mostly winged it and made it up as I went along, and I love how it turned out.

My son's room has a strange feature: it looks like there was an opening in the wall overlooking the stairs when the house was built, so as to make the room a loft. At some point it was closed up, but not all the way. Now there is a window at the top of the space (see pictures below). This didn't make any sense to us, and since my son is only 1, we wanted to put something over the window to make his room darker and more conducive to sleeping. We tossed around ideas of curtains, etc, but I saw a chevron shutter somewhere on this site (wish I could remember where so I could give credit for the inspiration!) and the plans were set in motion.

I used white oak flooring that someone was throwing away for the pattern. I was originally going to just do a chevron pattern because I thought it would be easier, but as I starting fiddling with the planks, I realized I would produce more waste that way, so I switched to the herringbone. You can see from the pics that I arranged everything on a piece of MDF and then cut off the extra.

The red pieces were all cut free hand on my table saw without a mitre gauge. It took a while to get them shaped correctly, but it was a really fun process. The hardest part was getting the finish off the flooring planks. I thought that it would be easy to sand it off, but it was taking forever, so I ended up pulling out the table saw again and positioning the blade so it barely cleared the surface (maybe 1/32") and worked all the pieces to take off the finish. That was a huge pain, but I wanted to stain it and that wasn't happening with the finish they came with.

The glue up was a little tricky. Since I needed to get everything lined up perfectly, I ended up taking it apart in pieces and gluing small sections at a time. Luckily it worked and I didn't have to cut repacement pieces.

Lastly, I framed it with 1x2s and hung it by drilling into studs. Oh, and we attached a piece of fabric to the back since it would be showing through the window.

The best part is that I finally got to use the weathered wood accelerator! And for a bonus, I used the Barn Red stain too.

I like how the weathered look came out. It was super easy to brush on with a foam brush (it has the viscosity of water), but I really wish that there was another top coat protector that could be used with it. I got some laquer spray like the can said and I'm glad I tested it first, because it definitely changed the color and gave it a very noticeable amber hue. That is not what I wanted, so I sanded it off and left the shutter uncoated. Since it's inside and hung out of reach, I don't think it really matters if it has a protective finish, but it would have been nice to have an option.

This was a really fun project and I want to thank Rust-Oleum for the awesome samples!