The Great Mantel Cover-up

Wow, what an undertaking that was!  I finally installed the mantel yesterday and I was relieved to be done with it...

It started out like this, with a simple idea to just cover up the existing concrete slabs poor excuse for a mantel!

It would have been a piece of cake if it wasn't for these weird corbel brick thingys 

I had to do several trips back and forth to do fittings of the bottom piece that had to be notched around the corbels.  In addition the depth of the right side was a half inch different than the left side, yippee, $%^&

you can see the cutouts for the corbels

Here it is all put together and on my dining room table

The crazy thing is 12 feet wide!

Here it is all glazed up.  The base color is Martha Stewart Brown Alpaca with a thin choc glaze over top.

Sorry for the fuzzy pic, my finger must've slipped.  I had to put a few pieces of 1 x 5 on the top as spacers for the mantel to lay on.  The whole thing was mounted using two wood blocks that are screwed into the wall on either side of the existing mantel.  Of course there were no studs anywhere to be found so I had to use giant butterfly toggle bolts.

All I did was slide the whole thing over the top and screw the new mantel to the wood blocks from the side.  


The room will be painted in the same Brown Alpaca color next week.  The pictures are not really reading true with the color.  In person it blends perfectly with the fireplace.  For some reason it looks different on film.  

It really turned out great.   I added a little extra glaze on the mouldings after it was up so those areas are still wet and look a little shiny.    I'll post some more pictures after the room is painted.

Phew!  I'm glad to be done with that!