Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Shutters- overlooked, I think not!

As I mentioned earlier, this has been the year of the yard.  We actually do have some grass that has survived our drought this summer and you should see our water bill!  But, we were expecting that too. 
One thing that is happening is what my darling husband calls "scope creep."  This is a mysterious problem that seems to cause the TO-DO list to expand.  Yes, we had specific ideas for what really needed to happen and somehow, it just goes on and on.
Case in point would be our shutters.  Lots of people have those convenient vinyl (plastic) shutters and it worked for us for a long time.  Looking at the front of the house, though, it was just blah.  My husband even said, "We have shutters?" 
How hard could it be?  It is only 8 plus feet off the ground.  We do live on a hill so that wouldn't be level and of course, it is behind the bushes.  I shimmied up there to see if I could even get one off-piece of cake if you don't count all the wasp nests behind the thing.
Well, with the help of my adult children, we constructed simple 1x4 plank with cross beam shutters that were a little taller that the original but same width.  I painted it thoroughly with primer and outdoor paint and was ready to install.
Oh, my, this is the hair raising part:  The holes left by the previous shutters weren't in the same places on all four.  Ugh...  We ended up countersinking long screws that are gently (pounded) coaxed into the proper holes and "liquid nailed" to stay on the house.  So far, so good.
Then a couple more trips up the extension ladder to fill holes and paint. 

Another bit of "scope creep" would be that we just had to change out the light fixtures too.  Well, the devil is in the details, they say.  And the fun of home ownership never ends.