The life of a mantle

For not even being six months old yet, our mantle sure has been through a lot.

From this (see that little red arrow pointing to it?):

To this:

To this:

To this:

And then I just couldn't get down with that decorative moulding, so off the moulding came:

To this (finally decorated!):

And now, this:

Even though I much preferred the mantle's clean lines to the little squares all over it, I have always thought it looked a bit unfinished. And with our mantletop newly decorated, it seemed like the right time to add a few finishing touches to our mantle.

I looked to these three photos for inspiration:

Our goal was to make this project as simple on ourselves as possible by working with the existing mantle and just adding a few finishing touches.

We added some caps (aka plinths, according to the labeled picture above) to the leg bases. Then we nailed a peice of chair rail moulding to the bottom part of the mantlehead (I just made that term up...I have no idea what to call it!).

You can't really tell in the picture, but I wanted the mantlehead to look a bit more substantial, so it didn't just look like we nailed some moulding and called it a day. So Nick added a thin sheet of wood from the chair rail moulding to the crown moulding, just to make the mantlehead look a bit thicker than the legs so it would stand out more.

I am super pleased with the results. It gives a much more finished look, and only cost about $10.