Staining Vinyl Shutters A New Color

It was bugging me. The shutters….every time I passed the house I would look up…why…why don’t you match your door (that is me…talking in my head…to my house…moving on…) I thought it was something I would just have to grow to love…or wait to replace. Until I found out the goodness that is Gel Stain. Let me give you a little background…

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 Staining Vinyl Shutters

This was the front of our house about a year ago…(sorry for fuzzy pic…only one I could find…) We had a single door with glass sidelights. The door was ivory and the shutters were beige. Nice but not all that special….

So we decided to replace the single door with some gorgeous double doors with loads of light….I love these doors…

The doors are a faux wood (vinyl wrapped) insulated door. It is made by Pella. It is the only full light door on the market that fit the opening we were left with after the sidelights and door were removed. My painter friend told me he would be able to stain the new door with a product called Gel stain (made by Minwax). Ok…I said…lets give it a try. Since I had never used this product before I left it to a professional. I watched him apply it…using very little gel stain…and wiping it off immediately leaving some of the faux wood grain to show. It came out perfect. No need to seal with poly…it is built right in. Most folks think these doors are solid wood….the finish is very convincing.

  So now we were left with this fabulous front door…and shutters that looked a bit blahhhhhh….Until I had another conversation with my painter..

  “hey…since my shutters are similar material on the outside…do you think we could Gel Stain those to match??” Heck yeah! So the same process on the shutters began. We did have to wait several months because of the weather. You need a couple rain free/frost free days for this Gel Stain to dry properly. Once it is on….it is on…not easily fixed. You need to work fairly quickly too. Brush on half of shutter….wipe off…leaving a bit of a wet edge so you don’t get streaks and lines.

  We love the updated look!! By the way….we only used about 1/4 of a quart for all these shutters and the door. You don’t need to use a lot of it to get the desired results:) An inexpensive upgrade on the cheap!

I hope you can come visit me at Cleverlyinspired.com! I am always sharing clever things on a budget 🙂

Published: August 22, 2013Filed Under: Contributor, Design Inspiration Tagged: Cleverly Inspired, Exteriors, Shutters, stain

About Cassity

Cassity started Remodelaholic with her husband, Justin, to share their love for knocking out walls together. She is an interior designer, wife, and mother of two. She and Justin have remodeled three homes from top to bottom and are working on their fourth. Making a house a home is her favorite hobby.