June 25, 2014

Fitting Shutters to the Brick Trim

One of the things we did during my blog absence was to build shutters for our house. We just built simple board shutters. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tutorials for them on the net so I won't go there. What I did want to show you is how we made them fit with the irregularly spaced soldier brick.

I've told you before that Moe, Larry, and Curly built our house. Shemp installed the shutters. This house would look fine without shutters, or it would have before Shemp started working. The bricklayer, whose name does not live in infamy, put soldier brick on the top row. That is when the brick are laid vertically, and on ours every other brick is laid with the bottom kicked out about a half inch.



That half inch sticking out was a problem for Shemp and the cheap vinyl shutters he was going to install. These shutters only had a front and sides, so they were basically a Tupperware lid, and yet Shemp couldn't figure out how to make them lay flat against the brick with the ends of those soldier bricks sticking out. Being all brawn and no brain, Shemp soon figured out exactly how to remedy the situation though. He picked up a sledge hammer and bashed in the offending soldier brick. Did I mention the shutters were vinyl and could have been cut with a pair of scissors?



He slapped some mortar into the holes he made, not being careful to fill them completely because he was in a hurry, and then he installed the shutters. And there they stayed for thirteen years until we bought the house and took them down to paint. I had heard buzzing that sounded like it came from the walls and sure enough, mud daubers had found enough holes and cracks in Shemp's patches that they had gotten into the wall.

Since we were going to put the shutters back up, we just caulked the holes and didn't worry about rebricking around the windows. But the shutters we built are just a little wider than the originals and solid wood, so flat across the back, and the bashed bricks weren't completely flat either. So we had to come up with a solution to make the shutters lie flat. This solution also worked on the window that didn't originally have shutters and still had intact soldier brick.

We cut one inch strips and attached to each side on the back, cutting them short where they met a kicked out soldier brick.



Looks good from the front.



8 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, but not really. Well, more clever than Shemp anyway. lol

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  2. Sounds like alot of work but how nicely they turned out in the end! Looks great! :)

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  3. Great fix. I cannot believe anyone would smash those bricks!!!!!

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  4. Smart thinking! The new shutters look great!

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  5. Don't you just hate it when previous owners leave little surprises like that? I guess they figure no one will ever find their mistakes that they cover up.

    The new shutters look awesome!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks! They still need some work apparently. The brad nailer wasn't good enough.

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