Finally to the mantel- the project Ben has been dying to finish up. I definitely don't blame him.. after all, the stone was done in January!
In previous posts I'm sure you saw that I had wrapped the old crown with burlap as a temporary fix..
We spent many months staring at the mint green molding below- it's much mintier in real life!
Over the last few months we really went through all of our options- what we wanted the mantel to look like, what the finish should be and what materials we wanted to use. Eventually we decided to wrap the existing crown with a large, clean beam that we would then stain.
I don't really have good pictures of the cutting process (or the assembling process) since all hands were needed on deck. But after cutting the three sides (with mitered corners), Ben sanded them all thoroughly..
After some trial and error we discovered assembling it and then installing it as a single piece was the easiest, so we fastened the sides to the front using brackets. This was taken right before we got ready to lift it into place..
After the sides were screwed in place I was able to let go and take the picture below..
From the side view you can see that the new mantel is higher than the existing- leaving about a 2" lip. We haven't really agreed on what to do with it at the moment- I'm pushing for a metal lined insert, Ben would prefer wood.. I'll keep you posted on who wins that battle.
That morning Ben said he wanted to finish up the mantel and move onto other projects since it would take "no time" to install. Five hours later the mantel was up..
But like all of our projects we aren't quite done yet.. the wood still needs to be stained. If only we knew what color stain the floor guy used..
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