How To Make Interior Shutters

These DIY interior shutters are a sleeper. They are quick, inexpensive, and and so effective. Which tin can't be said nigh many DIY projects.
During quarantine, when my family was Zooming in every corner of my house, nosotros needed a little privacy and separation at times, non to mention the quarantine kitty we took in that needed some separation of her own, so I had to become creative. Equally did most of y'all…

The window pictured above is between my kitchen and my sewing room. And my kitchen is open to the rest of my business firm(which I by and large dear). My married man teaches piano, and during quarantine he taught all his lessons online, correct from the piano in our living room. Then, during lesson times, I had to discover a style to keep things quiet for him. Initially, I blimp a piece of foam insulation in the window to serenity my sewing automobile. But the eyesore of the insulation speedily got old.

When I was browsing my local Habitat for humanity I spotted a fix of bifold closet doors that looked to be the right size for my window opening. I took the measurement and auspiciously they were the correct size. They were marked $22. I idea that meant $22 for the set, unfortunately it was each . And so I ended upwardly putting the doors back because I felt $44 was too much. Well, after looking into information technology further, I realized $44 was half retail cost, so I went back for the doors.

The Habitat is fortuitously located only about a mile from my daughters cheer gym. And so for 1 and a one-half glorious hours per calendar week, I become the privilege of rummaging around the thrift uninterrupted. Highlight of my week!

Since my window is 36″ wide, these ix″ doors are the perfect size for the opening. I just need to cut the length in half and cut the width slightly to account for the hinge dimension.

Cut the doors in between the console insets is the key to success of this project. Then the start thing yous want to measure is the elevation to bottom dimension of your window opening and make sure your cut won't state in the eye of one of the panel insets. Mine ended upwardly right between the insets, thankfully.

The cut is really like shooting fish in a barrel because the doors are hollow cadre. The edges are the only identify where there's solid woods, so you tin can use any kind of saw for this projection. A circular saw is certainly the easiest, but you lot can also use a jigsaw or fifty-fifty a manual hand saw.

The hinges are important likewise. They demand to be able to open completely flat so the shutters can accordion style fold to each side of the window.

Similar then…

This style of hinge has to be installed on the face of the shutter(bifold door) so that it'll open completely. I wasn't happy about this at commencement, considering I wanted the hinges to completely disappear. All the same, when I painted the shutters I painted the office of the hinge on the face up of the door and information technology pretty much disappeared.

I hung my doors, and depression and behold, they would Non shut completely flat. The hinges took upwards a little more space than I anticipated, and they overlapped in the center. bummer…

I marked the overlap with a pencil, took the shutters down, and cut off 1/2″ on the center of each of the doors.

Fortunately I just had to remove 1/2″ because the piece of wood within the door is simply most i inch thick and anymore would have left my border hollow. And so I would've had to replace that piece of wood.

I re-hung my doors and voila, they fit similar a glove.

I then sanded and painted the shutters. I painted the shutters same color equally my kitchen cabinets, and the shutters expect lovely from both sides.

The kitchen side still needs another coat of paint. And I need to figure out a way to lock the shutters or possibly put a magnet on the inside edge to keep our quarantine cat from pushing them open. They're great for muffling sounds betwixt the rooms and they look soooooo much ameliorate than the piece of insulation I had stuck in there.