Wooden Shutters
Shutters are a great addition to your home that have many benefits including the fact that shutters are a great way to insulate your home reducing energy costs. They secure your windows against storms and break-ins and they look great and can give your house a real continental feel. There are a number of companies who specialise in the installation of shutters but if you are a DIY enthusiast and you want wooden shutters then build your own. As with any wood work job one of the most cricital stages of the project is choosing the most suitable wood to use. This article will help you choose the right material for your shutter project.
Pine
Pine’s abundance has kept the cost of using this softwood quite low making this an excellent choice if you are on a tight budget. For making shutters to install on the outside of your home it is important that you use yellow pine as this is a far denser and more weather resistant wood. Painting the wood will of course further improve its weather resistant nature but if you prefer to let the wood age naturally it will turn honey gold in colour.
Lime Wood / Bass wood / Linde Wood
There are several types of trees in the family ‘Tilia’ which are suitable for wood working, what you will be bale to get depends on where you are. In North America you will be able to get Bass Wood and in the UK Lime which is called Linde in the rest of Europe. All these timbers are perhaps more suited for interior shutters used to keep direct sunlight out of rooms. Lime wood has a small grain which makes painting it easy, usually only requiring one coat. Lime is also great for making other household improvements so if you want the woodwork in your house to match you shutters, lime could be the way to go.
Red cedar
An interesting quality of red cedar is that it naturally repels insects which can be a fantastic benefit in the summer months. Red cedar is also a long lasting wood, its weather resistance means that if properly taken care of it can last for decades as an exterior shutter and longer still when fitted to the interior. Red cedar is also just a beautiful wood with a spectacular grain and colour.
Phoenix wood
If you are really after some oak shutters but your budget doesn’t stretch to it, phoenix wood shares many of the qualities of English Oak but is a lot more affordable. It is a great choice for larger windows, particularly on older buildings where a wood like oak would really fit the style. Another benefit of phoenix wood is that it is flame retardant so making doors and shutters from this wood can actually slow a fire down.
Manufactured wood
Don’t be too hasty to rule out manufactured woods like MDF, they actually hold a great many advantages over natural woods. They are cheaper than natural woods and also a lot easier to work with. One feature that contributes to their ease of use is that manufactured woods are sold by their size at sale whereas natural woods are sold by their size before drying; the process of slowly drying natural woods in a kiln reduces their size significantly so it can be difficult to work out exactly what what sizes and quatites you need for your shutter project.
If you do decide to build your own shutters from wood, or indeed when working with wood for any project it is important to make sure it is approved by the forestry commission who ensure that the trees used for the wood are taken in a sustainable manner.