Premium High Quality Poplar Bermuda Shutters
Custom Bermuda Shutters
Estate Millwork custom builds elegant custom Bermuda shutters to your exact specifications using real solid wood, traditional joinery and authentic architectural detailing. Bermuda shutters are charming and functional additions to the exterior of any home and provide shade to the inside of the house while preserving the ability to view out the window. Based upon the colonial architectural style of Bermuda, this classic style of shutter is typically mounted above the window and in many cases can be much wider than it is tall. Estate Millwork manufactures Bermuda shutters in any size and style and our wider Bermuda shutters are fabricated with multiple vertical components called sub-stiles to give the maximum strength for shutters that span multiple windows or wider openings.
How to Order Bermuda Shutters
The first step in purchasing Bermuda shutters is to decide which windows and openings will receive the treatment, then follow our measuring instructions below. Once you have your measurements, use our handy Bermuda shutter App to select the style of shutter you want, enter the dimensions and then you can review the drawings, price and rendering of your shutter You can also select the material type -- we offer over 15 species of material but Spanish Cedar and Mahogany are the best for exterior applications. You can also select options to have your Bermuda shutter factory primed and painted and can use the controls in our shutter designer to select the exact color you prefer, or provide us with a color name of any national brand and we will match it.
Premium Quality
All of our Bermuda shutters are custom built to your exact dimensions from solid wood including cedar, teak, mahogany and others. We precisely machine the various components of our Bermuda shutters, including the rails, stiles, substiles and louvers in our robotic plant and then carefully hand assemble them and hand finish them. All of our custom shutters are built using authentic mortise and tenon joinery, solid rails and stiles and traditional pegging through the tenons for maximum strength and stability of these elegant exterior shutters. In addition to the solid wood construction, we offer finishing services including priming, painting and staining and a selection of hardware for installation. Our shutters are carefully packed and depending upon the size of your project can be shipped anywhere in the world via parcel, LTL, or ocean freight.
How To Measure Bermuda Shutters
If you are installing your custom bermuda shutters on windows, typical installations mount above the window, and you will need to collect two measurements. The first is the width, measure the outside width of the window including casings if there are any and add 2". The length of the shutters is the distance from the top of the window opening to the bottom of the window opening, including casings if any, and add 2 inches. The mounting hinge should be ordered in the same width as the Bermuda Shutter. If the shutter is to be mounded inside a window opening or a porch enclosure, measure the inside width and length of the jamb and subtract 1/4" inch from each dimension to give a reval of 1/8" all the way around the shutter. The mounting hing for Bermuda shutters should be ordered in the same width as the shutter.
Solid Wood Mortise and Tenons
True Tenons
Our premium quality shutters are carefully constructed using a time consuming and precise operation. Whereas other lower quality shutters are made using screws, nails, dowels or biscuit joints, each of our exterior wooden shutters has a minimum of 4 hardwood tenons. The end of each rail is painstakingly machined to have a 1/2" X 1 7/8" tenon by a custom built tenoning machine that Estate Millwork developed so that we could continue to provide the best quality joinery in the industry, at an attractive price. We gave up the cost, but not the quality.
Deep Pocket Mortises
Each stile is precision machined with a minimum of two deep pocket mortises, and these mortises perfectly fit the associated tenon. Again, Estate Millwork has used precision automation to preserve the quality of our products, while reducing the cost. We have software that connects our website directly to the machines in the plant, and when a customer places an order with us, all of the precision programs for machining the mortises into the stiles are sent to the plant for automatic execution. The mortise tenon joint, is the strongest joint in millwork, and adds tremendous strength, even without the use of glue.
Hardwood Dowels
Once the tenon and mortise have been machined, the parts are put together and a hole is drilled through the mortise and the tenon. A slightly oversized hardwood dowel is driven into the hole, locking the tenon into the mortise for the life of the shutter. Even though glue is not required, Estate Millwork takes the added step of gluing the tenon into the mortise, and gluing the hardwood dowel into the stile.
Hand Assembly
In our commitment to preserving the best of quality millwork traditions in each wood shutter, we have automated much of the drudgery of some of the operations, but assembling a shutter is still something very much in the realm of craftsmanship. After all the parts of each wooden shutter are manufactured, one of our skilled craftsmen fits them together in a specialized jig for dry fitting and final assembly. We do not use pneumatic or hydraulic clamps as they can damage or over-stress the wood. The craftsman uses his innate feel for the materials to set the appropriate clamping pressure prior to drilling and doweling. Each wooden shutter receives the individual attention of craftsmen all along the way, but the final assembly is where the shutter comes together the first time, ready for years of service on your home.
Shutter Options
Thickness, Width, Height
The "slab dimensions" are the size of the actual exterior shutter from top to bottom, left to right, and the thickness. Our default standard thickness is 1 5/16", but that can be varied from 7/8" to 2 1/4" to match existing exterior shutters. The length and height can be specified to the nearest 1/16" inch. Depending upon the style of the shutter, we have made widths up to 20 feet wide, and heights up 30 feet.
Shutter Frame Dimensions
Because all of our exterior wooden shutters are custom built from true rail and stile construction, we have the ability to replicate any component dimension on existing shutters, including rail height, placement, width, thickness, and stile width and thickness. Typically, the bottom rail of our custom shutters is 4. high, and all other rails are 2 1/2" inches. Stile widths are usually 2 1/2" but we have the ability to make them of virtually any width, including different widths for left and right stiles -- sometimes used for pairs of shutters.
Custom Sticking
Out standard products are S4S, or square shoulder sticking, but we have the capability to mould any feasible profile to the inner or outer frame fields. Common choices are ogee, cove and bead, bevel, cove etc. In addition to our stock sticking profiles, we can also custom grind tooling to achieve any desired profile to either match historical wood shutters, or to meet an architects or home owner.s specifications and preferences.
Shiplapping and Beading
For operable shutters, or for decoration, our wood shutters can be machined with a bead on one face of the inside edge of the shutter, and with a ship lap on the other, allowing the shutters to overlap by 3/8" when they are in the closed position - permitting a tighter fit. The left and right shutters are machined as pairs so that in the closed position, each face of the pair has a decorative bead visible.
Panel Profiles
Our raised panel shutters can be raised with our standard scoop profile, but we offer bevels, coves, ogeees and other profiles as well. Additionally, for the extremely discriminating home owner or architect we can create new tooling to match existing historical panel profiles, or to meet with a unique custom requirement.
Louver Styles
Our louvered shutters can be fitted with either our standard bullnose louvers in 3 sizes, or with a chevron or bevel profile as options. And because we are a custom shutter maker, we can also accommodate any special profiles that are specified by the customer.
Cut Outs
Raised Panel and Flat Panel Shutters can have a limitless variety of decorative cut outs machined into the center of the panels. Common shapes are moons, anchors, trees, hearts and we have a large number of stock cut outs which we offer, as well as the ability to match custom patterns that are provided by the customer
Finishes
Estate Millwork can ship our custom wooden shutters in natural, primed, painted or stained finishes. We can match national brand color numbers, pre-tint primers for light or dark finishes, and apply hand rubbed stain finished, even to the time consuming louvered shutters.
Poplar the Poor Man's Cherry
Poplar hardwood lacking bold coloration or an exciting grain pattern has a pale olive-yellow brown heartwood and sapwood is lighter off-white or gray with greenish hues and doesn't often get the respect we feel it deserves. The Poplar tree is widespread across all of North America and Europe, and it grows very rapidly and to large sizes, making it very easy to sustain.
Because the wood is often painted or used in secondary applications where it isn’t visible, it is very easy to find wide, clear sections of Poplar for a variety of uses.
Poplar lumber is pretty soft and very easy to work. But botanically speaking it is a hardwood meaning it is a deciduous tree. But it is highly stable, easily available in width and length, and takes paint and stain famously well. However using Poplar as a stain grade species is often overlooked. Some will call Poplar wood "poor man's Cherry" as it oxidizes over time to a much darker shade of brown.
Handcrafted with Sustainably Harvested Lumber
At Estate Millwork we air dry much of our lumber, and after air drying we finish drying in low wattage dehumidification kilns.
Every piece of wood we purchase is used to the fullest on products, at Estate Millwork we have a very high yield ratio of 94 percent due to the use of automated saws and optimizing software. The remainimg 6 percent which is mostly sawdust and chips are either burned to heat our plant or send to local cattle farmers for bedding and composting.
Nothing is wasted. Some of Appalachian lumber we use comes from Amish farmers in our county who harvest with horses instead of mechanized equipment, and do our rough sawing on 1920s sawmills that are also extremely low input compared to larger commercial sawmills of today. All of our imported lumber is plantation grown, and not harvested from natural forests.
To learn more about our sustainability practices click here
