Estate Millwork Knowledge Base
Exterior Shutters with Elegant 18th Centrury Craftsmanship
Published: May 22, 2020
"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne." Estate Millwork uses traditional joinery methods to manufacture elegant wooden shutters and louvered wooden doors , much of them unchanged since the heyday of woodcraft and furniture making, the 18th century. All of our products are hand assembled, and hand finished and our bench work is accomplished in such a way as the result is indistinguishable from the finest craftsmanship produced in the old ways. At our mill, we still employ the apprentice system to bring on our young and energetic woodworkers under the guidance and tutelage of st...
Wood Shutters and Doors Made from Premium Materials
Published: May 19, 2020
Estate Millwork uses the highest grades of premium hardwoods to manufacture our louvered doors and wooden shutters . We buy selectively from quality vendors and import premium exotic woods from all of the world including Africa, Asia and South America. Our domestic hardwoods are often grown in the forests that surround our plant in the Allegheny mountains of Pennsylvania, and we have long standing relationships with the premier timbering outfits in this part of the country that give us preferred access to their best stocks of material. Many of the employees in our plant started o...
Finish Them! Practical Tips for Finishing Your Doors and Shutters
Published: May 15, 2020
At the end of your woodworking project you will be dealing with the issue of how to protect and preserve the woodwork you've spent all this time on. This is no small matter. Now that you have invested time and money into your project, you quite naturally want it to last a long time and look good doing it. This final phase of a woodworking project, and the stuff you put on your woodwork, is called finishing. Now before we go too far, we should clarify the difference between painting and finishing. They are not the same. This might seem obvious, but it should be said. For doors and s...
Thoughts on Painting Wooden Shutters and Being Sneaky
Published: May 12, 2020
There are probably as many different ideas on how to paint anything made out of wood as there are people with stuff to paint. A lot of the basic, good advice that applies to painting a wooden door also applies to painting a wooden shutter . Things like preparation, ventilation, wearing a painters mask, cleaning, priming, getting good paint, and applying multiple coats of paint. All that is relevant and applies to painting shutters too. However, there are a few unique factors that apply to wooden shutters that do not quite apply to other parts of your house. Before I go on, this i...
Measure for Measure, Shutters
Published: May 08, 2020
Like a lot of things, getting the proper measurements for your window shutters is not difficult, but it should be done with a little care. An oversized or undersized shutter might not look right, and it would be a shame to go through the process of getting quality shutters and then find they do not even fit your window. So please don't neglect this step! A good rule of thumb is to measure for each and every window where you want your shutters. Do not assume that once you have measured one of your windows you are done! We would all like to think that everything is "standardized", and that ...