This is a place I photographed on Ill de Re in France. The whole island has strict heritage rules about shutters.
These are shutters in my beach houses at Currarong - above with ticking fabric inside and below in traditional "greek" style with white boarding.
I have a thing for shutters. Our heritage-listed farmhouse here at Sky Meadow used to have shutters before the farmers added vinyl siding (I can hear your gasps...) sometime in the 80s. God love them, they thought they were "modernising".
One of the first things we did when we bought the house was strip off the vinyl siding, which had in effect protected the old cedar weatherboards, so it wasn't all that bad.
We have tried to find these old shutters, which graced all the french windows - floor to ceiling in height - but they don't appear to be anywhere unfortunately. We have searched high and low - under the house, in the shed, even tracked down the old farmer. According to him they could still be in one old shed a few paddocks away, which is now not on our land. It looks very rustic and could well be snake infested, so I am not sure exactly how keen I am to venture in there....
Now we are working on the church hall I think we need some shutters made for it as well. The problem is they are very fiddly to make which makes them quite pricey. However, they are worth it, don't you think?
image via 
mary beth had 2 chairs and an ottoman that she had purchased off 
mary beth didn't know how to sew but fortunately her mother-in-law emily did. i told emily my vision for a floor-length burlap table cloth for the 55" dining room table that we found at a yardsale. she jumped on her sewing maching and whipped up this amazing table cloth for mary beth and jeffery. 
here is what the completed dining room looks like.
because we were trying to get the most out of mary beth's budget i decided to recover her existing antique dining room chairs. i also opted to make fabric shades out of her existing mini-blinds. here's the link to the directions on the 
mary beth had previously owned a slip covered sofa and wanted something with a little less maintenance. for the family room i selected a 
another great find was a club chair that i found on clearance at 
if you are shopping on a budget another good place to look is at antique stores. sometimes shoping at antique stores requires a little extra effort to dig through the junk but when you luck out it's worth it. it was definitely worth it to find this beautiful antique coffee table. it was originally $140 and because this particular antique store offered a cash discount we were able to get the table for $80. the top was originally the same woodtone as the legs but it was a little scuffed up. instead of touching it up I antiqued only the tabletop. the paint and glaze for the antiquing was only about $12.
