Mantle Maven

First off, I am going to let you know that I will be unapologetically bragging on my husband throughout this post.

I will say - David is stubborn. I'm impatient. So I'm more prone to "let's buy it" vs. "let's build it from scratch." When he told me he wanted to build the mantle from scratch, I was pretty sure he was crazy, but we went with it.

Back in this post, I explained how we hired a mason to remove the false front of the existing fireplace and patch the brick. And how we went to a salvage yard to try to find a mantle to go there, but couldn't find any that would fit just right. So, David set out to build the mantle himself.

First, we had to get the fireplace prepped. The fireplace looked like this after the mason was done.

We hired a mason to expose the original fireplace

David next had to frame in the fireplace surround. He cut all his boards to length, then pieced them together in the living room lying down on the floor. We raised it up and voila...we had a frame to attach to the existing fireplace.

Cutting the bottom brace off the frame. Love those socks!

The frame in place

Let's take a moment to admire the beauty of that shiplap that I worked so hard on. Just kidding. The frame! David put two 2x6 boards in the middle of the upper part of the frame so that when we hang our TV above the fireplace, the TV mounting bracket can be attached directly to those boards.

Next, sheetrock. Ugh. Heavy, messy stuff. I may have nightmares tonight just thinking about the mess it made. BUT - it went up a lot easier than we thought.

Sheet rock attached to the frame and with a first coat of mud, getting ready to be primed and painted

David then painted the sheetrock (and the ceiling, and the rest of the room). And then, the fun part - he started on the mantle.

Now, our inspiration. You can't see much of it, and it was filthy, but you get the idea! The grooves, the different dimensions/layers, the corbels, etc.

We found this mantle at Hailey's Salvage in Nashville and used this picture and some scaled drawings David made of it to build the mantle for our house

David started with a sheet of MDF, and ripped it down with a table saw to the size boards he needed. Then, he cut the grooves into it using different router bits. That's the part that absolutely amazes me. He cut all those little grooves into the wood like he'd done it 100 times before. But he hadn't. And it's perfect. 

Check out all those grooves masterfully routed into the MDF ;)

So then, the really difficult part. We needed corbels. We should've traced one at the salvage yard, but didn't. So David found a cad program to use online, drew it out on that program, and then sent it to the genius me. I cut it out of card stock on my Silhouette Portrait (it's a vinyl/fabric/card stock cutting machine that's amazing and so much fun!).

Pattern for the corbel that David drew online and I cut with my Portrait

Back to the real work. He cut out the corbels with a jigsaw, sanded them down with a belt sander to smooth out the edges, and then it was all ready to be painted.

We've quickly realized how important the painting process is to making things look professionally finished. David used bin tinted shellac primer to seal the MDF, then used Sherwin Williams oil-based pro classic semi-gloss with Flood penetrol, which is a dry-time extender and leveling agent. (I just spoke Greek. Questions? Ask David.) The finish is so pretty, smooth, and shiny!

After finishing up the paint job, he brought it into the house and attached it to the sheetrock. We were hoping to just use construction adhesive, but there wasn't enough surface area to make it stick. So we screwed it in, and will be covering up the screws with baseboards along the bottom (which we had already planned on adding) and trim under the top.

The semi-finished mantle!

I couldn't be more excited about the way it looks. It's absolutely beautiful. I'm proud of him and how close to the old mantle we found at the salvage yard this one looks (except in MUCH better shape and the perfect size for our opening).

We still need to finish trimming it out (you can see the exposed frame here, which will be covered), but we want to run the wiring for the TV first (HDMI cables and such).

Next up - the hearth. The brick on the hearth had been removed prior to us buying the house, but we didn't like the concrete slab showing, so decided to cover it with tile. We chose this mosaic tile from Lowes and light gray grout.

David cut the tiles to size using a corded Dremel and a diamond blade, which we were afraid would be terrible but ended up not being too bad (says the wife who busied herself in another part of the house while that work was going on and who did none of the cutting work). We laid the tile out ahead of time to get all the pieces cut, then applied the mastic, and slowly but surely laid the tile sheets.

Laying the mosaic tile on the hearth

I have to say this was a process we were pretty nervous about as it was our first tiling job (well David's first...Dad let me tile and grout a step in their garage when I was in middle school). But it went pretty smoothly!

Applying the grout

The grout looks pretty dark here but dried much lighter. And look at that beautifully routed mantle!

The (not quite) finished product

We love how the tile looks on the hearth!

Next on the hearth, we need to caulk/grout by the firebox and add trim around the outside edges (likely stained to match the floor).

I'm so proud of how this project turned out! It's amazing what David has pushed himself to learn and do since we bought our olive on Olive. This home is so full of character, but it's fun getting to add even more with the transoms, the custom mantle and hearth, exposing the shiplap, and other things we have done or plan to do. I can't wait for the living room to be finished so we can put our feet up and enjoy that space!

And for good measure...here's a photo of what the fireplace looked like before we moved in:

Progress

It's been way too long since I've posted, and I have so many fun projects to give updates about! I'll try to get caught up over the next couple of weeks.

Several weeks ago, I posted here about David's work in creating an opening for the transom. Well, we've finally gotten it in place and it looks amazing! It still needs trim and the wall above it in the dining room needs to be sheet rocked, but we have a glimpse of the finished product and I'm sooooo excited about it!

This is the doorway between the living room and the dining room.

We have decided to stain the transoms instead of painting them (since we'll be staining the doors; all the trim in the house will be white), and chose the 9-light pattern to mimic the pattern in the glass cabinets in the kitchen and in the upstairs window. We ordered the transom raw from Transoms Direct - they custom built it, then shipped to us. David stained it, framed the new doorway, and hung it. The doorway still hasn't been trimmed out, but we'll get there. We're hoping to decide what we want to do in the dining room before we place the trim (and replace the drywall above the door in the dining room).

Oh, and the mess. Please pardon the mess in the living room. Patching all the walls and the ceiling, mudding the drywall above the fireplace...I had no idea how huge of a mess that would make! The sheetrock dust was EVERYWHERE. Actually, it still is everywhere. Every time I think it's all cleaned up, I find another coated surface. Regardless, it has been so much fun to paint the walls and ceiling and see it get closer to being finished.

Drywall complete on the fireplace surround, and patching around the windows and doors.

Patched and primed!

Next up...working on the mantle. I can't wait to show you that project. David has done an amazing job!

Hitting a Brick Wall

Our house has three fireplaces - one in the living room, one in the dining room, and one in an upstairs bedroom. We also have brick in the kitchen that used to house the exhaust (or something like that) from the furnace in the basement or a stove. Or something. The brick in the kitchen is painted (insert a groan here...that may be a project for another day).

Upstairs in the sleeping porch, which as I mentioned before has officially become Sagan's playroom (again, a project for another day), the stack from the kitchen downstairs comes up through that room in a corner. We could see the brick at the bottom of the stack, but were unsure if the coating on top of it was helping keep it structurally sound, or if we could remove it. After speaking with a brick mason we determined that it was just to hide the brick and offered no structural support, so we decided to remove it.

So...first things first. David got a hammer and chisel and went at that stack. And, excitingly, there was brick underneath! The brick isn't in the greatest shape so needs a little bit of work, but we'll get to that. One day.

Exciting {albeit messy} progress!

Ta da! We still have some cleanup to do on some of the bricks, but the stack is mostly exposed!

Now, to the living room fireplace. I didn't get the best before photo to show how it was coming apart from the wall, but it was. It looked like the fireplace was not original - that these bricks had been added at some point. 

We talked to a mason who had done work in older and historic homes, and he agreed that this was a new front that had been placed in front of what was likely a larger firebox and a lot of brick. While we removed the sheetrock next to the fireplace where we will add built-ins, we decided to pull down the sheetrock around the fireplace as well. We have plans to eventually fame above the mantle and hang our TV there, so we needed the sheetrock to come down.

Again, there was a hard stucco-like surface. Maybe some kind of concrete board. Regardless, where that met the shiplap on the adjacent wall, there was a small gap where we could see brick was behind that hard surface. 

We contracted with a mason to tackle the project. We were afraid the brick behind this wallboard might not be stable, and didn't want to take any chance that the fireplace might crumble. After the first day of him working on it, we came home to this. I'll admit I was slightly nervous.

Crumbling bricks, ugly white firebox...we weren't sure how this would turn out!

 It took him two days, and we're so pleased with the results. He only had to replace a couple of bricks, he fixed the mortar, and sealed it so they wouldn't be crumbly. 

Muuuuuch better!

Now, this isn't how we plan to leave it. We plan to add a mantle. We had planned on building one, then thought we'd try to find an antique one. After visiting Hailey's Salvage in Nashville yesterday (and finding loads and loads of potentially beautiful mantles), I think we're back to needing to build one. Stay tuned...

We could spend hours here!

So many options, but none just right.

We really liked the details on this one, but the opening wasn't large enough to show enough of the brick around the firebox. So David drew plans and measurements to build something similar to this.