The part of the house we’re living in faces west and we can see it gets the brunt of the weather. The shutters are old and the paint has deteriorated with years of winter rain and wind lashing against them, and blisteringly hot summer sun too. Of all our shutters, these are the most needy of restoration; the paint that remains on them may well contain lead and in the patches where it isn’t flaking it’s welded firmly onto the wood.
Work starts with a heat gun and a metal scraper – the smell of the paint bubbling and peeling from the wood reminds me of an old school hall floor… potent even though I’m wearing a mask of course. Once the paint has been stripped, I give the shutter a light sanding. I then use wood filler to repair any rot that has appeared from years of rain. When the filler has set hard, I use the sander again to remove any excess filler and blend it into the surface. Finally, I get round to the painting stage stage but sometimes this is not so easy… we were originally just going to paint the whole shutters Anthracite Grey but after seeing the way other some people had painted their shutters – we had shutter envy! We absolutely love the two-tone look of having the metalware in black and the wood in grey…. so, the job has become much more complicated as I have to paint the metalwork after painting the wood in grey. It sounds simple but owing to the age of the shutters the metalwork is impossible to remove for painting. Therefore, the black Hammerite metal paint goes on last and I have to do it very carefully as I need to rotate the vertical rod at various stages to ensure an even coverage of paint.
The Maison de Maître is set back a bit from the road and the although the shutters are old, they have not been as fiercely pounded by nature's wrath. They are in an okay condition and with just very minor repairs I think I will be able to get away with giving them a good clean and then painting directly onto them, also in grey, thereby removing the need for all the laborious scraping and sanding – fingers crossed of course! We have not been able to remove these shutters from the building yet due to the weight of them, so they may have to be painted in situ during the summer months… Watch this Space!!
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