I didn't have to go very far to find my new piece of architectural salvage. Didn't have to risk a tour through a condemned building; I didn't have to go to an antiques fair-flea market, like I did for this piece, which I wrote about a while ago.
I stumbled upon this old shutter when I was hauling an armload of pruned forsythia switches to the back yard twiggy compost pile (as opposed to the gooshy compost pile at the other side of the back yard.) On my return, I glanced at our firewood stacks. My usual angle of view for the firewood is from the house, and most of that view is blocked by our shed--which is a good thing, because it's not a beautiful sight. Some stacks, some strewn-around unstackable scraps and stumps, some "melting" sheets of particle board on top of the tippy stacks, and then there are the other things that Handsome sort of likes to hide. Like his fishing boat. His 5 gallon bucket stack. Parts for his portable sawmill. His "special" wood, which looks like weathered pieces of slabwood and bark but will someday be...something.
Yet there were two old, wooden shutters out there amongst the firewood and specialwood! When and where did Handsome find them?
I have several ideas for the old shutters. I can see building a simple support on legs, and using one shutter as the under-glass surface of a sofa table. With a lot less work, I could keep it in its original, vertical position, and use it as a sort of a bulletin board, folding over the tops of the papers that I want to display and hanging them off the louvers. If both shutters were in better condition, this would be especially nice to do by hinge-ing the two together: they would support each other in a way akin to a room divider screen. However, one of them is missing half of its louvers.
So...I think I'll focus on the intact shutter, scrape off the loose paint (using safety precautions--there's likely some lead in that old paint,) re-evaluate to determine whether or not to paint it anew, and then mount it on the wall above our bed, as sort of a headboard that's not a headboard. Maybe suspended from the picture rail by two narrow chains?
I will definitely post photos when this project is complete.
I stumbled upon this old shutter when I was hauling an armload of pruned forsythia switches to the back yard twiggy compost pile (as opposed to the gooshy compost pile at the other side of the back yard.) On my return, I glanced at our firewood stacks. My usual angle of view for the firewood is from the house, and most of that view is blocked by our shed--which is a good thing, because it's not a beautiful sight. Some stacks, some strewn-around unstackable scraps and stumps, some "melting" sheets of particle board on top of the tippy stacks, and then there are the other things that Handsome sort of likes to hide. Like his fishing boat. His 5 gallon bucket stack. Parts for his portable sawmill. His "special" wood, which looks like weathered pieces of slabwood and bark but will someday be...something.
Yet there were two old, wooden shutters out there amongst the firewood and specialwood! When and where did Handsome find them?
I have several ideas for the old shutters. I can see building a simple support on legs, and using one shutter as the under-glass surface of a sofa table. With a lot less work, I could keep it in its original, vertical position, and use it as a sort of a bulletin board, folding over the tops of the papers that I want to display and hanging them off the louvers. If both shutters were in better condition, this would be especially nice to do by hinge-ing the two together: they would support each other in a way akin to a room divider screen. However, one of them is missing half of its louvers.
So...I think I'll focus on the intact shutter, scrape off the loose paint (using safety precautions--there's likely some lead in that old paint,) re-evaluate to determine whether or not to paint it anew, and then mount it on the wall above our bed, as sort of a headboard that's not a headboard. Maybe suspended from the picture rail by two narrow chains?
I will definitely post photos when this project is complete.
Comments
Post a Comment