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My Shutter Project

I have been a little busy these past few days. Attempting to update one of the bedrooms in our rental house.

You see, someone way back when put decorative mirrors up on the wall. You know the kind, square mirrors speckled with gold. They scream 1972!!  They are glued to the wall, so removing them has felt like a daunting task.  A needed task, as a few years ago when we sided the house one of the panes of glass broke.

I set about updating this look this week. I found a great buy of used shutters on Craigslist! I got 12 of them for $30.00! So much cheaper than Home Depot!!

Removing the old glass mirrors proved to be just as difficult as I thought it would be. I literally had to chisel away pieces of mirror with a hammer and screw driver piece by piece. It seems like it took me hours but in reality it only took a few. Of course I do a super woman welcome to my friend LeAnn, who came over to smash glass with me one afternoon.   With LeAnn's help, I believe I put a total of two hours into smashing glass.

I had glass everywhere! All those cute curls I know have, well they did a great job of keeping that glass caught in my hair. Even LeAnn had glass particles everywhere. We were such a site!



Then came the clean up! I had put down a drop cloth but that glass was flying everywhere and went in places there was no drop cloth. My husband and I spent about half an hour just vacuuming up the carpet. Looking for shiny pieces of glass. I even took tape and ran it across parts of the carpet just to make sure it was all clear!

Once we had enough of the mirrors removed, we found the nails that held this piece of plywood up to the wall. With relative ease, we were able to pry it lose and remove it. I had strongly suspected that this part of the house had originally had a window that had been sided over. I was not wrong in my suspicions. There is was, a completely empty old frame for a window.

We made a quick stop at Lowes to buy some cheap white paneling. We cut it to size and covered the hole with it. Next, I prepped the shutters by removing the hinges and taking three of them apart. We measured the space and hung the shutters in place with screws.

The end result, a faux window.

In my opinion, a vast improvement over the 1970's gold speckled mirrors! My only disappointment, it is in a rental house and not my house. So, I won't get to see it everyday.

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