How To Update Your Shutters - The Cheap & Easy Way

Updated 9.2.22

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When we purchased our house, the shutters were a chocolate brown. Wow!... doesn't everything looks so bare? This photo was taken 7 years ago.

The brown was fine, but over the years they began to fade and the paint actually broke down and started to stain the siding.... Not good! You can see it here in the next photo...

The lighting actually makes them look darker than they were... 

Instead of purchasing new ones, which would've been ridiculously expensive... over $600.  We knew we could clean them up and paint them.

Hubby worked hard taking all of the shutters down and power washing the house. Kinda scary up there on that tall ladder! Glad he isn't afraid of heights!

Each shutter is attached with 6 shutter pins.  It's like a plastic 'nail' with barbs on them to keep them in place.

The easiest way to remove them is to slide a hammer behind the pin and gently pry.

The flip the hammer and pry the other way... gently pulling each way until the pin comes out.

Sometimes they come out easily and sometimes they don't... Here's a video of hubby removing the pins. In the video, we go over what happens when they break or won't come out.




After they were all removed, while hubby was power washing, I began to clean the shutters.  Basically, I just hosed them down and gave them a quick scrub.

We knew we wanted the shutters navy, but do you know how many shades of navy there are???

I had a couple samples made. ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS... get a sample!  It's a couple of bucks, and it's so worth it!  Believe me, it will save you from color disasters!

I tested them on my shed shutters.  Of course, I'm going to paint those too!

The one one the right is a touch 'greener'... We didn't care for that.  We loved the one on the left, Starless Night.  Just a side note... Samples only come in interior paint. So, when I went to paint these shed shutters, I had to sand them a bit before painting them.

Now, let's talk paint.  Do NOT go cheap on exterior paint.  It's not worth it.  I love Home Depot paint and I purchased their top line Behr Marquee exterior paint.  It was AMAZING to paint with.

I brushed painted all the shutters.  It was sooo easy to work with.  Not one brush mark.  Every single shutter dried to perfection!

I can't tell you enough good things about this paint.  Was it cheap? No.  $50 a gallon.  But I bought it during the Memorial Day sale and got a $10 rebate! Booyah!!

I didn't prime either.  I didn't feel like they needed it and the paint has a primer in it.  I guess we'll see how well they hold up. 👍

I also painted the new shutter pins.  I should have bought them off of Amazon it would've been a lot cheaper then Home Depot.... oh well.



They only had them in black and I wanted them to match perfectly, so I just painted the tops.

After they were all dry, Hubby put them back up. I love the navy! ❤️

They were super easy to put back up.  Just line up the shutter and gently hammer the new pin into place.  Hubby wrapped some fabric over one of our rubber mallets, just in case.

I am soooo happy with how they all turned out!

What a difference!!

Thanks for stopping by!

Blessings,

Lori