Don't have a mantle to decorate for Christmas? Build one.

Edited to add: The mantle is now all decked out for Christmas. You can see that post here.

Peeps. Andrew rocks. Seriously. He really really rocks. We love our house. It’s perfect for our family. There’s only one little bitty thing that bothered me…. It has no fireplace. Thus, no mantle. Who doesn’t love decorating a mantle?? Last Christmas I missed a mantle so badly. It just wasn’t the same. Andrew told me that this year I would have mantle woes no more. We started thinking and planning. WHAT exactly did we want? Where would it go? What was the look we were going for?

Our first thought was to do something like this from PB:

I loved the chippiness…..the colors…I also LOVE the yummy stuff on top… We liked it but thought we wanted a more traditional looking mantle.

So, we started searching the Internet for inspiration. What would we build?? hmmmmm

Something like this? Simple and traditional?

this maybe? Another traditional… I LOVE that Magnolia wreath and those urns….

This really caught my eye…. The black distressed wood was gorgeous… I REALLY thought about this…

Should we do something like this beauty? We couldn’t replicate the marble or the gorgeous carving, but we COULD have that curved opening and add a lot of wooden embellishments.

As I was searching and looking nothing seemed PERFECT for this house. I wanted it to look like it was born in THIS house. Like it was meant to be here…. We thought we had a plan, and then I spotted this:

Mandi at Vintage Revivals won a huge contest with this fabulous “faux fireplace” she made out of cabinet doors. Genius I say! We wanted more of a fireplace instead of just a mantle… This piece was the ultimate inspiration. She has a wonderful tutorial on how she did it here if you want to build one like hers…. Andrew thought it was a fantastic idea to use cabinet doors. It took all the hard work of adding the details out of the mix…. No trimming out and adding all the panels…. Way to GO! We headed to our local Restore and climbed through ALL their panels. We had measured our wall where our fireplace was going and searched for panels with the look we wanted in the right dimensions. We came home with this:

We added some 1 x 6’s for the hearth and a 1 x 12 for the mantle itself.

My man went to building. Don’t ask me the specifics.. I don’t build :) We had that old piece of moulding left from one of our repaired pieces, and it was perfect for the mantle support….

I stained the hearth and mantle with dark walnut. We wanted a more traditional looking fireplace with a twist… Isn’t that hearth divine?? Can you believe it was made from regular cheapy 1 x 6’s?

All painted and ready to go!

And FINALLY! Here she is in our home! Our house is an original cottage of Fairhope, and the living room has a strange shape. This small bump out wall was the only place we really had, but it’s perfect here. Doesn’t it look like it was born here??

I glazed over the entire piece with RL Tobacco glaze. I love where the moulding meets the sides. He cut one double panel cabinet down the center to make the sides.

He really worked at keeping the scale in proportion with the wall.

He notched out the back to fit perfectly on the wall.

The electrical outlet kept us from leaving the back open. We thought about adding a piece of beadboard to the back, but I decided to just layer some mirrors instead.

I pulled things from around the house to put together a quick simple mantle for Thanksgiving with the family.

I am SO thrilled with the end product. It ended up being just what we wanted, and the cabinet doors made it a much easier process for Andrew. He completely built it in an afternoon. The next day it got painted and assembled. It added just the right touch for our living room. I can’t wait to decorate it for Christmas today or tomorrow!

Here’s our little family this Thanksgiving. There’s so many of us we kinda cover it up!

It’s a perfect space to sit with my girls….

or to put all the cousins for a picture. We all realized later that we all took turns looking like goober mommies in the mirror trying to get the kids to cooperate. See those little grubby handprints on the mirror?? That’s the story of my life….

I am so thankful that my sweet hubby indulges most of my “wants”. Even if we could just go buy things like this we wouldn’t. We love making our house our home with things WE redo and make. It makes things that much more special. Don’t you think so?

love and hugs.

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My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

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The Shabby Chic Cottage's Transformation Thursday

Between Naps on the Porch Metamorphosis Monday

Savvy Southern Style

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Style Feature Saturday at Perfectly Imperfect

Friday at Remodelaholic

Restore it Wednesday at Restore Interiors

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