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The Shuttering Horror
I reside in a tiny house that took nearly a year to put together well enough to live in it. The construction included plumbing, walls, insulation, flooring, and, unfortunately, seven new windows. And, of course, all the windows have shutters.
The shutters came to us through the mail via a carpenter on the Facebook marketplace. They give the house an air of personality. They also required me to seal them so that the wood weathers slower.
I started my task by using an ancient can of stain that the builder handed off to us before we drove away from him forever. The material hadn’t resembled anything remotely like red cedar since probably 2015. The contents of the can resembled a congealed, thick mess that my stir stick couldn’t touch. While the stain could cover my shutter wood, the result wouldn’t impress anyone. To top it off, I ran out of it before I finished.
I sighed and started over with a brighter hue of REDWOOD CEDAR. Not only was it red, but it was eager like a puppy to cover the shutters and top siding of the tiny house. It lapped up the wood of my house like nothing had ever covered the siding and shutters previously (it had). The stain glowed brightly from afar. The neighbors couldn’t miss my efforts, even if they tried.
Since I’d had no choice but to start over from the beginning, the process required two coats of the much better sealer. As I finished the first coat on the next-to-last shutter on the top of the house, I heard this weird buzzing that caused me to pause.
The eerie sound came from behind the last set of shutters. I sighed and surveyed the backyard from ten feet off the ground. If there were wasps or bees behind the shutter, I wouldn’t be able to continue. I’d most definitely need the bee man in my life, my husband, to come and dismantle whatever hive had built itself behind the safe confines of the shutter closed to the wall of the house.
I wasn’t close enough to open the shutter dog to see what kind of mess I’d be tackling. I climbed off the tall ladder and moved it to a central location for ease of shutter perusal. I decided that I’d brush sealer onto the siding next to it. I reasoned that because the can was small (a quart), I could hold it and the brush while I examined the shutter.
