DIY Barn Door Shutters From Reclaimed Wood

Happy November! 🙂

I have a wall in my front room that’s been bugging me for some time now. It has a nice, big, pretty window in the middle, but nothing I came up with to fill up the sides ever looked good.

Pretty boring, huh? To be totally fair, I do usually have stuff on the end tables which kinda helps fill in the space, but there was still a lot of bare wall there. I had thought using shutters on either side of the windows, but could never find ones the right size that would look good there.

I finally got sick of looking at the empty space and decided I literally had to take matters into my own hands and DIY my own shutters.

My husband always saves any fence boards that are being disposed of from his contracting jobs, so we got a good little pile of them in our shop.

I apologize for not having any pictures of the actual construction of the shutters, but I will try to be thorough in my description of the process.

Each shutter measures 18 inches wide by 4 feet tall. We cut three boards for the back of each shutter measuring 6 inches wide by 4 feet tall using a table saw.

For the barn door “Z” pattern, we cut two boards measuring 4 inches by 18 inches and one board measuring 4 inches by 32 inches. The ends of the 4″ x 32″ board were cut at a 26 degree angle. We centered these 3 boards on the back boards and screwed them together with wood screws.

This is what we got so far. If you like them better unpainted, then you’re finished! 🙂

The paint I used to make my whitewash is FolkArt Chalk Paint in White Adirondack. You can get it on Amazon here. I poured some off in a bowl and watered it down to the consistency of milk, then I did two coats on each shutter. I used whitewash instead of straight chalk paint because whitewash will soak into the porous fence board wood and allow some of the natural patina to show through.

Once they were dry, I wasted no time hanging them up! It’s fall right now so I decorated the shutters with fall wreaths.

I really love how they turned out and they fill up the space perfectly!

I hope you enjoyed my DIY Barn Door Shutters From Reclaimed Wood! If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below!