Adding Character & Charm to The Back of Our Home...

Hey Friends!!

Long time, no post, huh?!

I usually post every Monday, but after the crazy weekend we had with tee ball games & other activities, I decided to extend my weekend one more day, so that I could get caught up on some things around the house! I was up to my eyeballs in laundry and I had a few outdoor projects that I was wanting to complete since we are going to be having company this coming weekend for Parker's 5th birthday!

I wanted to share with you one of those projects today!

If you remember, we stained the back deck a few weeks ago & I talked about future plans for our outdoor space....

 Part of those plans, included adding shutters & window boxes to the back of our home!

I know that a lot of people only put shutters on the front of their homes, but since I was wanting to spruce up our back deck & make things pretty, I thought adding shutters & window boxes would not only add some "cuteness" to the back of our home, but also add some much need color!!

So, I measured our back windows & made a trip to Lowes to pick up these....

For both sets of shutters, it cost me right around $40.00. In my opinion, that  is a pretty inexpensive way to add character & charm to your windows/home. I bought the shutters in white so that I could paint them to match the rest of the shutters on our home.

Speaking of painting, when you open the package of shutters you will find this.....

Personally, I think this is just an excuse for you to order the "special paintable units" which are more than likely a whole lot more expensive. I have bought & painted these shutters multiple times & have yet to have problem! So in my opinion, this *NOTE* is L.A.M.E. 

 Just Sayin' 

The weather was GORGEOUS this past weekend, so I grabbed the saw horses & set up shop in the backyard...

And got to work.....

I even got brave for a few minutes seconds & let Parker help me paint....

I gave each set of shutters two coats of paint & then set them aside to let them dry well...

The color of the shutter is called "LaFonda Boulder" and is a Valspar color from Lowes that I purchased several years back. I'm not real sure if they carry it anymore or not. When we moved into our home 7 years ago, the shutters on the front were black & I wanted something that matched the stone on our home to make things coordinate a little bit more. I brought home a few color samples from Lowes & found this color that matched our stone almost perfectly!

Here is a view of the front of our home to give you a better idea as to what I'm talking about....

(p.s. I pulled this picture from an old blog post & unfortunately this is as large as I can make it without it looking distorted! I will have to take some updated pictures of the front of our home to share here at a later date.)

Anyway...once the shutters were dry, I enlisted the help of my hubby to hang them for me. 

 

We just used the screws that were provided in the package to hang them. The screws are also white, so once they were hung, I just dabbed them with some paint to make them blend in with the shutters more.

We also built a couple of window boxes this past weekend to hang under each window & I spent part of my day yesterday filling them with soil & flowers. I just love window boxes & the amount of cuteness they add to windows! Here is what are windows look like now....

Cute, right?!

I wanted to share with you a full picture of the back of the house so that you could see the difference in the pictures & get a better "before & after" look, but because I have been working on the back deck & have a few other things going on back there, that will have to wait!! I'm hoping to be able to do a full reveal of our outdoor space real soon! :)

I will be back tomorrow though to share a little tutorial with you on how we made the window boxes in case any of you are interested! They were super inexpensive & so easy to make!!

Hope you all are having a great week!!

Thanks for stopping by! :)