Fireplace Screen Project

I am a vintage gal. Both in age and decorating style. Throw in architectural salvage and I am super happy. I love to remake something old into something new again.

Here in Seattle we have some nice salvage building supply stores. I own all sorts of antique salvage. Our beach house kitchen was remade with salvage supplies. We have an old physics cabinet from a school that was remodeled. Our open shelving is wood that is for stair treads and the bead board that we used for the walls, is actually flooring turned around. We have gotten a lot of compliments and one or two job offers for us to redo their kitchens.

So I am always on the look out for cheap (or even better free) building materials. During the summer I bought a bunch of old shutters. It was $15.00 for the lot of them, which was about 8 or 9 shutters. The first group was used for a mini gate to keep the dog from heading down from the top deck to the bottom deck where the pool is. While he loves the water, he can't swim worth a lick, and would drown. And moron that he is, never remembers this simple fact. Hence, we have had to save him a number of times. Not anymore, since the lovely shutter gate.

The extra ones just hung out in the garage until this week when I decided I needed a new fireplace screen. The old one, while fine for the intended purpose, was unattractive and not a cute vintage one. So I hauled them out and remade four of the remaining 5 into a screen.

While this was a time consuming project, it was simple to do. First I removed all the hardware then I sanded and painted the shutters white, since they were a horrible brown color. I measured a slat and made a template for the size of paper I would need to cover each slat. I went to Michael's and bought a floral paper and a music note paper. This was on sale, at .29 per sheet. It is best to use a pattern paper that is an all over pattern as opposed to a stripe or something that you will have to make sure is lined up.

Then watching Tivo, I cut the paper out. It was a good use of Tivo and I didn't have to feel guilty about the television watching time, since I was accomplishing something. Win, win!

I used decoupage medium but you can use a watered down white glue. Then I just glued away. I did both sides of the slats, because I am anal that way but you can only do the one side that you will see. I also lined up what little pattern I had, again the word anal would be used here, and you certainly do not have to do this. You will need to keep opening and closing the shutters to make sure you do not glue them closed. Even if you do (and I can speak from experience in this area) you just wiggle them and they will open.

I spray painted the hardware chrome because I cannot stand brass but you can either buy new hardware or just use the old hardware. Then I assembled it back as a shutter set and placed it in front of the fireplace. Which by the way, is horribly unattractive. But as I don't plan to reside in this house much longer, see no reason to replace it.

When the fire is going, I can either open the shutters so I can view the fire or just remove it to the side.

With the exception of a can of spray primer and the paper, everything used in this project I already owned.

So there you have a winter time project.