Deck the Halls...

It's here! Our crowning glory to our living room, our faux mantle. Ever since we moved into this home we have thought that the living room really was meant to have a fireplace on the far wall. Low and behold, the other homes in our area that are similar to ours all have fireplaces on that exact wall. So we knew our gut feeling was correct, yet currently we weren't in a position to be adding an actual fireplace. We both love the look of a mantle though and kept our eyes peeled for months on end.

I happened upon a beautiful mantle on Facebook Marketplace, and at a price I could stomach. We knew we would have to add to the mantle to make it work in our space. We met with the woman selling us the mantle, who I have to say was one of the nicest people I have ever met. I have to give a shout out to her here because she told me a ton of information about goats that was extremely helpful to us. We plan on getting some goats in the next year or so, after a fence is built.

Anyways, this mantle really caught my eye and was absolutely perfect. We cleaned it up, sanded it down a bit, painted it again, and added a piece of plywood to the middle that I painted to look like shiplap. Yes, we are “Fixer Upper” fans, and actually do like the look of shiplap.  Originally we wanted to put faux brick textured wallpaper on the plywood, to give a feel of a real fireplace, yet I couldn't find any locally and everything online just wasn’t affordable or looking like what I wanted.

We used a satin interior paint to go over it twice. And our favorite paintbrush, the Wooster 2inch angle Sash brush. Seriously, get yourself one, here's a link 

smooth plywood piece 48"x48"

I painted over it twice with the same satin paint. 

I measured every 8 inches and used a straight edge and a gray colored pencil to create the lines. 

Next fall we would like to get bookshelves to go on each side of the mantle and build it out so that there is depth and an actual inside space. At that time we will either figure out a brick facade or tile look to add and make it have more of a real feel to it. Which in turn will add more character to the house and storage space. It’s a win-win situation, one we are very excited to do.

We attached the mantle using something called a cleat system. I searched the best ways to attach something like this to the wall and found quite a few people use it, yet they build one with wood. Since we currently don’t have the tools or space for wood working as such, I set out to find something pre-made that we could purchase instead. I found a metal one typically used for hanging mirrors that could hold up to 300lbs, this one is by a company called Hangman. The mantle maybe weighs less than 40lbs total, but we didn't want to take our chances with another system as well as something that was long enough to go across the back of it and keep the weight even. Essentially this cleat is keeping the mantle leaning against the wall in an upright fashion and keeping it secured. Seriously, this thing does not budge.

The plywood attached to the back of the mantle.

We connected the cleat system to the top of the plywood since it was the piece that stuck the furthest out from the piece. 

Once we had it attached to the wall we saw that there were some good sized gaps on each side of the mantle and wall. We already had some gaps between the inset plywood that we needed to cover up as well. So hubs went to our favorite home improvement store and found some wood trim that blended in really well with the style. Honestly, you cannot even tell that it doesn't belong to the actual piece.

See that large gap between the plywood and mantle? Hubs is drilling holes here to attache the trim. 

Finally attached to the wall and the trim pieces added to cover the gaps. Looking beautiful! 

All in all, this project was very fun to do and oh so satisfying. It feels like it was always meant to go on this wall. Even though we will be adding more features surrounding it in the future, it still has an elegant touch to it. We love that we have somewhere to hang our family stockings for Christmas this year and something else to decorate the rest of the year.

Are there any projects in your home that you always felt like it needed to pull it together? Something you knew always belonged there? Let me know! Leave your blog link below too so I can see it. Thanks for reading! - Alisha

Like the stockings we have? We got them from Target, check out this link to them here and grab some for next year. They hold a lot of goodies from Santa. ;)


PS: All products in this post were purchased on our own, our suggestions are just that, suggestions for what we used and liked!