Scavenger Chic

Shutter and Slats Coffee Table

• By Joan
• September 29, 2016
• 5 Comments

On Monday I showed you my wicker table. I had to make a pallet wood top for the table because I had stolen the glass for this project. 

It all started when a friend of mine messaged me last week and told me that a local salvage yard was putting a bunch of mismatched shutters out in their parking lot under their free tent.  (Thanks Sue)

Free shutters?  Free tent?…why didn’t I know that they had a free tent?  I couldn’t go that night because they close early, hopefully they would still have some  the next day.

Well I’m happy to say they did, and I grabbed a bunch.  I even grabbed a couple for another friend of mine who was missing a couple of shutters on her house.

And now for my first shutter project from my new haul. I chose this black shutter because of the width, 20″ ,which just happened to be the exact same width of the glass.  It was fate!

After a good scrubbing, the shutter was cut down to the same length as the glass.  Again perfect! The length was right where the natural break of the shutter occurred. 

I was going to use the black side,  but this original blue color on the underneath kind of spoke to me.

In order to use the underside, I had to sand off whatever the brown stuff was on the slats and sand the edges where the black paint had sloshed over. There was even a bit of black paint that had drifted up between the slats. 

I didn’t have the exact shade of blue in my acrylic paints to match the shutter, but I was close.  With my acrylic paints I painted over the black sloshy paint on the slats and blended it into the blue shutter with my finger. Very exacting. 🙂

A reclaimed piece of 2×4 forms the frame for my shutter.

The corners were attached with glue and long decking screws.

Once attached, the frame was given a good sanding, especially the pointy corners and any splintered wood.

Finished off the frame with a white wax.

I measured the spindles with the glass and shutter in place so that if I wanted my total coffee table height to be 19″, the spindle height was probably closer to 18″.

Make sure that if you have old spindles, which may be different lengths based on where they sat on the stairs, that you match up the carved part of the spindle before cutting.

Soften up the cut end by sanding the edges.

I put the frame upside down and layered in the glass followed by the shutter.  With a nail gun, I used 2 1/2″ nails to attach the shutter to the frame. (Avoid the glass!) Just a few nails per side holds the shutter in place.

The reason you only need a couple of nails is this next step…using scrap wood, attach a small ledge on all 4 sides, butt up against the shutter, then glue and nail into place.

To hold the spindle in place, cut a piece of scrap wood with 45 degree edges as shown.

Screw into place.

You may want to paint your spindle legs before going on to the next step.

I used a half width piece of pallet wood, mitered at the ends, as a ledge to hold a bottom shelf. Nail or screw into place.

For the bottom shelf I used bed slats that I had leftover from this project. They were painted with teal chalk paint, lightly sanded, waxed then nailed onto the pallet wood ledge. Of course pallet wood would work just as well.

I love the glass finishing this project off. Can you imagine trying to set a glass down on just the shutter?

I hope you’re having a fantastic week and you all are enjoying the cooler weather. See you back here next week and until then, stay inspired.

Shared at Handmade Hangout, Salvaged Junk Projects,

Wow us Wednesdays, Talk of the Town,

Link Party Palooza,

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