Scavenger Chic

Vintage Shutters Wall Sconce

• By Joan
• June 23, 2016
• 8 Comments

Months ago, my younger brother showed up on my doorstep with a fantastic pile of architectural salvage stuff.   A pile of shutters, a couple of doors, tons of  spindles…he was cleaning out his garage and he thought I might be able to make good use of his found treasures. Junk makes me so happy and this was awesome junk!

From the pile of shutters, I have already made a headboard and mortise shelves but it was time to pull them out for project number three.

I know the two shutters above are different widths, I did end up switching out one of the shutters so that the two I used are both the same width.

As for the rest of my pile of junk, the candle holders are from the thrift store (according to the tag on the bottom, originally from Target), the block of wood used to be on my kids play set when they had a play set and the room divider was from my oldest son, Keith, who had found it on one of his job sites and thought I might be able to make good use of it.

The block of wood was cut into two equal pieces, I used a handheld jigsaw to free the decorative wood carving and a metal cutter to cut the candle holder away from the rest of it’s decorative stand.  What you don’t see, is that I kept about 3 inches of the wire that the candle holder sits on so that I can just insert it into my block of wood.

The wood carving was centered and cut to the width of the wood block.  It wasn’t quite tall enough to take up the entire space, so a few pieces of scrap wood filled in the gap.

Before attaching, I spray painted the wood block where the carving would be attached black, so I wouldn’t have to worry about staining it and it would appear to be just a shadow.

Attached the wood carving and scrap pieces to the block of wood with wood glue and a few finishing nails.

After the wood glue was dry, I sanded all the edges.

The blocks got a coat of antique wax mixed with a couple dabs of black chalk paint,  painted on and wiped off.

Back to the shutters…

I’ve mentioned this trick before, but if you have stripped screws or screws that are so full of paint that you can’t insert a screwdriver you may be able to use a Dremel with a cutting tool to cut a new slit so that you can insert a flat head screwdriver to remove the screw.

The shutters were finally apart and ready for their paint treatment.  I added yellow and blue to give the appearance of more layers of paint, but once I started sanding down the existing shutter, it probably didn’t need it.  There were already many layers of paint built up over the years.

I took the shutters outside and used a dust mask for the sanding.  Considering the shutters age, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a lead based paint.

This is the shutter after one layer of an antique wax.

And this is a close up.  You can still make out the blue and yellow that I slopped on.

I did want the shutter a bit darker, so after the first layer of wax was dry I applied a second coat  of antique wax mixed in with a few dabs of black chalk paint. Just paint it on and rub it off until you get the effect you want.

A few screws inserted through the back hold the block of wood to the shutter and a hole drilled through the top of the block was all that was needed for the candle holder.

I think I still have fifteen shutters still stacked in my storage room,  and that room divider was from a set of two, I really do have to get busy.

Have a great weekend.

Shared at DIY Collective, Handmade Hangout,

DIY Salvaged Junk, Wow us Wednesdays, Talk of the Town,

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Metamorphosis Monday,

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