shutters up.

Do you ever obsess over what should be the simplest things? I had such a hard time trying to choose the shutter dogs for our shutters. I didn't even realize there was a choice in such things (or that they were even called shutter dogs) until I started to look for them. I did so much online research and drive by photo snapping that I ended up with a folder full of photos - of shutter dogs!

Taken in Princeton, NJ over the summer; propeller:

Rat tails:

"S" variety:

"S" variety mounted on the side:

Taken in Historic Richmondtown, Staten Island, NY:

Scroll variety:

Crude yet minimal replacement on the same building:

For our own shutters, we've chosen the "S" variety. This is really more a choice of economy rather than an actual decision. We happened across two new old stock sets of "S" shutter dogs at a yard sale a few weeks back. They were $1 a box! It looks like we even saved 60 cents on the original price.

As of last week, the shutters are finally up on the house.

Before:

We now also have 7 different colors of paint on the house. This is the first time I've seen the grey we chose against the house. I love it. I'm not a "paint a patch and see what it looks like" kind of person - I chose this from a tiny swatch and bought it all at once. Relief.

We still need to find shutters for the upper floors. The other shutters we inherited had too much rot to salvage. Now, I can start obsessing over shutters.