We Heart Cedar

Two recent additions to our house have us loving cedar even more!  Our cedar planter box began our love affair with cedar.  It's such a pretty wood.  It has a slightly rustic charm, yet can also look polished.  Three cheers for cedar!

The first addition happened to the front of our house.  Adam and I have wanted to replace the shutters on the front of our house for sometime now.  We weren't 100% sure what we wanted to replace them with, so we decided to take our time until we knew for sure.  After looking to Pinterest for some inspiration, we decided that we knew what we wanted.  We ended up with a very simple, yet polished design.  

Before we get to our beautiful new shutters, take a peak at what we had going on before.  We had some plastic or vinyl shutters that weren't anything special.  They were still in good shape, but lacked any sort of pizzazz.  

After we agreed on a plan, we picked out some cedar from Home Depot.  We dug through the boards and selected the prettiest ones.  We tried to grab pieces with some character to them.  Once we had the boards, Adam assembled them using wood glue and an obscene amount of clamps.  He always tells me you can never have too many clamps and the picture below seems to prove his point! 

Once the glue was dry (Adam waited for several days), he painted each shutter with 3 coats of General Finishes Exterior 450 Top Coat in a satin finish.  He really likes using this because it is water-based so it isn't as stinky as other stains or polyurethanes.  This serves as a way to keep the cedar from turning gray, while also protecting it from the sun and rain.  We'll likely have to add another coat every few years to keep the shutters protected.   

Once the shutters were dry, we were ready to hang them.  We took down the old shutters and were shocked at the number of hornets' nests hiding underneath them.  Luckily they all seemed to be vacant!  

To make hanging the new shutters easier, we decided to use the anchors that were already in the brick.  It turned out to be a bit tricky and time-consuming.  We had to figure out where the anchors would be on the shutters, drill holes in the shutters and then attach them to the brick with exterior screws.  We were both sure glad that we only had four shutters to hang as opposed to more!  

But we were so thrilled with how they turned out!  They really help dress up the front of our house!  The cedar ties in nicely with the brick and our cute, blue door.    

I feel like they make the front of our home more welcoming, as well. 

Now that we have an updated front door and gorgeous shutters, we'd like the tackle the white railings. The white seems very heavy and blocks the front of the house.  We would love to replace them with cedar posts and slimmer wrought iron spindles.  That project probably won't be started until next spring, but we are definitely sold on using cedar for the posts!  

Here's one more shot of those cedar beauties!  

The second addition of cedar to our house happened in our backyard.  After a windy storm blew down the neighbors' old rickety fence, we finally decided to replace it.  Technically it wasn't our fence, but we felt like we needed it to help finish off our yard and keep Jazzy closer to home.  Here's how things were looking before.  We had a view of our neighbors' yard.  

While we adore our neighbors, we weren't super excited about the weeds and wood look that was going on.  

So we hired the same fencing company that installed our other fence to add a section to the back, dividing our yard from our neighbors' yard.  It definitely made a big difference!  
  

It creates a nice backdrop for our yard and also mimics the cedar from the planter box.

Who knew cedar could bring us so much joy?!