Board and Batten Shutters: Craftsman Style DIY

Are you looking to give your house a facelift? Try making these DIY board and batten shutters. They are easy and inexpensive to make, however they level up your curb appeal!

We have spent some time this summer updating the front of our house trying to add some curb appeal. In addition to getting a new roof and gutters, painting our garage doors, and giving our front porch a refresh, we also changed out our old faded shutters for some DIY craftsman style board and batten shutters. These shutters are a breeze to make and are a very affordable way to give your house some character!

When we were debating on what kind of shutters to replace ours with, I was not sure if these craftsman style shutters would work for our house. Our house is not a craftsman style home, in fact even after looking at some house styles, I am still unsure what “style” it is. Maybe just a 2 story? Anyway, I really liked the look of board and batten shutters so I decided the heck with it. It is our house and let’s go with what we like! If someone else doesn’t like it, that is their problem! 🙂

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For this project you will need

Supplies:

1×6″ quality pine boards (length depending on the height of your windows)
1×4″ quality pine boards
1 1/4″ screws
Wood Glue
Sandpaper
4″ Lag screws
Primer & Exterior Paint (optional)
Kilz primer spray paint
Paint brush/Small roller/paint tray
Foam brushes

Tools:

How to make board and batten shutters

We decided that pine boards would be good enough since we were going to be priming and painting them. That helped to keep the cost down and it really didn’t matter if they had a few knots in them. Since we painted our garage doors a gray color, I wanted the shutters to match them. You don’t have to paint these shutters, they would look amazing just stained as well. However if you are just staining them, you may want to check into a better kind of wood with less knots (unless you like that look).

We measured our windows to figure out what size to make the shutters. We have three different sized windows on the front of our house so we had to come up with a size that would work for all three windows. For the biggest window on the bottom, we knew three boards and three battens (the smaller boards that go across the front of the shutter) would look good since they would be pretty big shutters. It is really deceiving how big the shutters are when they are not on the house! I was convinced that three 1×6″ boards next to each other would be too wide for the window, but they actually worked perfectly!

The top windows are not as tall as the bottom window so we decided to use only two battens for those. Since the smaller top window on the left is only a single window, three boards would not work for that. We went with two boards instead. I have always hated the placement of that window being right next to the side of the house (remember that problem I have with symmetry?), but I feel like these smaller shutters fit the size better than our previous ones. It is helping with my problem. 😉 I really like that each of the shutters are a little different but that they work together cohesively.

Of course, all houses are different so you will have to measure your windows to see what size fits your house the best. After you have your height measurement, gather your supplies and cut the 1×6″ boards to length.

We played around with the battens on the boards to see where we wanted to place them. We decided that we would place them 5.5 inches from each end.

Lay your boards together for each shutter and using a straight edge, mark a line across all the boards.

We used a big paint stirrer as a spacer in between our boards. The size of the spacer was about 1/4″.

We laid out the 1×6 boards with the space in between each board to figure out the length to cut our battens. The length of the battens for the shutters with three boards was 17 1/16″.

And for the shutter with two boards, the length was 11 1/4″.

Add some wood glue on the outside board and lay your batten across the boards using your marked line as a guide.

Clamp the batten to the board and use the nail gun to nail the board down.

Repeat with the other side. Leave the middle board as the last one you attach. Use the lines you marked earlier as a guide on where to attach the board. Use your spacer to help if needed.

Nail down the middle board.

To make sure the boards were firmly held together, Mr. Wonderful used 1 1/4″ screws in the back. Using his drill, he put them in the back so you could not see the screw holes on the front side of the shutters. He put two in each board, staggering them. And of course, his mantra is to pre-drill everything!

How to paint the craftsman style shutters

We very lightly sanded the shutters along the edges and corners but did not have to sand them too much. Here is a tip: use some Kilz primer in a spray can on the knots in the wood before you apply the primer. This is an oil based primer and will help keep the tannin from bleeding through the paint. For the rest of the job we rolled on some Zinnser primer. It is a water based primer so much easier to clean up. Even though the paint we were using is a primer/paint in one, we wanted to prime them first since they were bare wood.

To get in between the boards, we used a foam brush. Make sure you have several on hand as they would occasionally get caught on the wood and tear. These worked better than a regular paint brush for coverage. Make sure to get into all the cracks and crevices as well. You want the whole shutter to be covered with paint so the wood is protected from the elements, even the backs.

After letting the primer dry, we applied the paint. Again the foam brush worked well for between the boards.

We let the shutters dry for several days so they would not be tacky at all before attaching them to house. Here is another tip: don’t lay them against each other even if they feel dry. 🙂 They will stick together and you will have to touch up the paint. This may have been learned by experience. Ha! We do not have any trim around our windows to attach hardware to hold the shutters so we decided we would attach them directly to the house with some lag screws. The size we needed only came in a gold color so I painted the tips of the screws so they would blend in better with the shutters.

You could fill the knots and nail holes with wood putty before painting but when they are up on the house you can’t really see them anyway so we did not bother doing that.

What do you think? Personally, I love the look of these board and batten shutters. I think it gives our house more charm and some needed character! I will share some overall before and afters of our house in another post soon so you can see all the changes! Enjoy what is left of the summer, it is going by way too fast!