DIY Window Shutters: Guide to Enhance Your Home’s Curb Appeal

I love the cute, cottagey look of our new painted white brick house, but if I’m honest it does lack a lil’ character now: enter these moody green DIY window shutters.

Though we’re yet to actually hang them (read: we’re procrastinating because they’re going to be heavy and held above our heads for a long time while drilling into brick), even just propping them up against the house I can see how big of an impact they’re going to have in the overall feel of the exterior.

White brick with the exposed stone fireplace and green shutters? Masterpiece if I do say so myself.

Anyway, the build portion of these DIY window shutters was really quick – a weekend project for us even with two little kids at home, so I bet it could be knocked out in a day or so with undivided attention.

The basic assembly

We used shiplap pieces to make the shutters – the main base of it is just three pieces nailed and glued together on the tongue-and-groove part.

Then, I ripped the tongue part off the remaining pieces with the table saw and ripped them in half so my pieces were each about 2.5 inches wide (you could use another type of wood like exterior grade 1x3s for this, but I wanted them all to have the same rough-sawn look as the shiplap backing).

I used those skinnier pieces for the outer frame and the X detail, and those were also just nailed and glued in place.

I had always envisioned the style with the crossed over wood pieces but once I started thinking of the logistics of all the angles and math, my eyes glazed over and I decided I’d just skip it and be happy with the more board and batten design we had up to this point. But luckily for me, I married Alex.

He decided he would forge ahead and figure out how to do the design I originally wanted, though it seemed very complicated so I let him take over the next part of this little DIY window shutter tutorial.

How to Find the “X” Angle

Alex here. Okay, this is pretty difficult to explain, and I’m not sure if my math is actually official, but it worked for our DIY window shutters.

Think of the first diagonal piece of the ‘X’ pattern as the longest side in a right triangle, with the other sides being the width and the height of the opening.

I used this handy calculator website to enter in those three measurements and get an angle for the cut, which for the bottom right corner of the opening was roughly 62.9 degrees.

Here’s a visual of the triangle shape and the angle you’re trying to find:

I started by cutting the piece down to 27 inches (the length of that longest side of the triangle), and lined it up over the rectangle to make sure it was the correct length.

Here comes the hard part: figuring out how to make the angle cuts. To do this, I needed to do some math to figure out where on the shiplap pieces to mark and cut.

Note: these are specific to our shutter sizes and will probably be different to yours if you try this design.

First, take the angle of your triangle from earlier (ours was 62.9 degrees) and divide it by 90 (which is the angle of the rectangle corner). For us, that was 0.7 or 70%. For us, that 70% was roughly 1 12/16ths of an inch on our 2.5-inch piece of trim. So, I marked a line 1 12/16ths along on one end of the X trim (left to right) and did the same on the opposite end, but marking in the opposite direction (right to left).

Next, line up one mark with an inside corner of the rectangle on the shutter and the mark on the other end with the opposite corner to make the start of an X. When everything’s in the right spot, draw a line from the rectangle corner straight down to the edge of the wood in both directions to give you the lines for the angle cuts.

Note: if your math is right, the two lines you’ve just drawn should be the same length.

Here’s a visual of how that looks once it’s done:

I clamped the trim to a table and used a jigsaw to cut the edges off along the lines. You could also use a miter saw but the angles and the skinny width of the wood trim make it difficult.

Hold the second piece of the X detail over the first one and trace around the end cuts but make sure to hold the second piece upside down because the angles will be opposite. Once you’ve made the corner cuts, nail the first finished piece of the X in place. Lay the second piece on top of the first one in the X pattern and mark where it overlaps then make those cuts and nail those two pieces in place.

Finishing steps

Okay, back to Emma now the math is over.

Once Alex had done the lord’s work and finished the X detail, I got to work caulking and filling in all the nail holes. Then, I used our sprayer to add two coats of Field Trip by Clare Paint and it was the perfect moody olive green.

Next, we’ll figure out how to hang them on the house and I’ll make sure to update again then but for now, they look amazing and I feel pretty accomplished that we figured this out (even if I did none of the math).

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Happy DIYing!
Emma