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    Home » Home Decor

    Building Our Fireplace: The DIY Mantel - Our DIY House

    Published: Jul 30, 2013 · Modified: Jun 11, 2018 by Christina Dennis · This post may contain affiliate links · This blog generates income via ads · 13 Comments

    One of my most favourite features in Our DIY House is our fireplace. It's THISCLOSE to being done - I'm waiting on the cleaning fairy to sprinkle me with motivational fairy dust so that I can clean the slate surround and seal it. We've already had our first fire in it and it was glorious. I'll share the final picture of it soon (this will be my official motivator to get it done), but meanwhile I'll share with you the process of building our DIY "rustic glam" fireplace.

    At first, I wasn't sure about this whole "wood burning fireplace" thing. It was my hubby's choice to splurge a little a lot on one, and I wasn't convince that it was the right choice. Well, I am now! It adds such a beautiful feature to our home as you walk in the front door. It's warm, cozy and inviting.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    Hubby's more of a rustic guy and I consider myself somewhat of a glamourous girl (on the inside, anyhow), so we each added a little of our own taste to the fireplace design. I wanted a thick, white mantel and he wanted rustic slate surround. I wasn't sure about the combo at the beginning, but I'm totally in love with the contrast now. My inspiration was this gorgeous fireplace in this Sarah Richardson designed living room. I liked the sort of coastal feel it had.

    If I've never said how wonderfully talented my mom is, I'll say it now: my mom is talented. She saw my vision and she told me right away that her and Dad could make my vision into a reality with less than $70 worth of wood & MDF (no joke!) and a TON of their hard work.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    First, we mounted a piece of MDF (about 1" thick by 12" high) onto our fireplace (that was wrapped in cement board) for the back of the mantel. We checked into the requirements of how far away from the firebox our mantel had to be and used that as a guide for placement. We wrapped this piece around the sides as well.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    Next we screwed on a piece of 1 x 3" lumber to the front top edge.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    We screwed on another piece of 1 x 3" to that and mounted a slim piece of 1 x 4" beneath it as pictured above.

    For the actual mantel piece, my parents laminated two thin pieces of MDF together to make a thick piece, and then they notched out the shape of the fireplace so that the mantel would wrap around it. This was screwed to the top of the wood pieces.

    My parents made the beautiful little corbels by laminating 4 pieces of thin MDF together and cutting out the shape with a jigsaw. They were sanded to perfection, primed with Killz and painted so that the seams are totally invisible!

    A thin strip of MDF was mounted to the bottom of the main piece. We made sure it was wide enough to jut out from the slate we were installing around the mantel.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    Here, you can see the crown molding we added to the front (from the mantel piece to the piece on top of the corbels) and a cross-section of the pieces we used to create the mantel.

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    The entire thing was then primed with Killz, and painted with 4 coats of white semi-gloss paint (Valspar Ultra White).

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    The result is one of the most substantial and gorgeous looking mantels I've laid eyes upon in real life. Can you believe it cost less that $70 to make (but many, many hours of work)?

    Building Our DIY Fireplace: The Mantel - The DIY Mommy

    Later, I'll share with your our rustic glam fireplace reveal and how we installed our pretty slate tile to complete our look.

    Thanks Mom, Dad & Hubby for all of your hard work on this gorgeous, heirloom mantel!   

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    Reader Interactions

    Comments

    1. [email protected]

      October 24, 2013 at 4:56 pm

      Can you send your parents over to my house to help us craft our mantel for our fireplace redo? It's beautiful! So custom, I never would have guessed it was $70!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        October 24, 2013 at 10:38 pm

        Thank you! I know, I'm SO lucky! I have the best, thriftiest, most talented parents. They helped us a lot as we built this house.

        Reply
    2. Sheryl

      January 25, 2014 at 11:55 am

      Christina, your fireplace is gorgeous! I have a question about the fireplace itself. My daughter is going to use a lighter colored, but similar split-face stone on their fireplace. Did you have your firebox set forward some, or was the 'bump out' dimension created by adding the layer of cement board alone? Thank you!

      Reply
      • Christina Dennis

        January 26, 2014 at 7:42 pm

        Thank you, Sheryl! We actually ended up having to frame out the fireplace to accommodate some plumbing on the sides of it. It wasn't originally our plan, but I'm really happy with the look! It's just bumped out the width of a 2 x 4.

        Reply
        • Sheryl

          January 27, 2014 at 7:20 pm

          Thank you so much for your response and for the information!!!

          Reply
    3. Melissa

      February 24, 2016 at 2:16 pm

      Hi there,

      Love the fireplace mantle! What is the thickness of the actual mantle shelf? It looks like 1" or 1 1/2"?

      Reply
    4. Dani Goodman

      June 07, 2018 at 7:00 pm

      Hi there, I appreciate your instructions on how to build a fireplace mantel! It turned out gorgeous btw.
      I have one question, in regard to the paragraph, "For the actual mantel piece, my parents laminated to thin pieces of MDF together to make a thick piece...", is it supposed to read, "...my parents laminated *two thin pieces of MDF"? I was trying to figure out what the thin pieces of MDF were laminated TO or WHAT? :):)

      Reply
      • Lindsay - The DIY Mommy

        June 11, 2018 at 9:45 am

        Thanks for catching that it is suppose to read “two”

        Reply
    5. Alp

      July 20, 2019 at 2:01 pm

      Beautiful mantle! I will use it as a guide for my own mantle project.

      FYI the two pieces of 1x3 that you describe in your post are probably 2x3 from what I can see in the photos.

      Reply

    Trackbacks

    1. Building Our Fireplace: Installing the Slate Split-Face Tile – Our DIY House | The DIY Mommy says:
      October 1, 2013 at 2:00 pm

      […] case you missed it, here is the post explaining how we designed and built our custom mantel. The finishing touch to our “rustic glam” fireplace, was the installation of these […]

      Reply
    2. Make a Ruffled Burlap Christmas Tree Cone (+ Our Vintage Woodland Christmas Mantel) | The DIY Mommy says:
      December 3, 2013 at 9:00 am

      […] so much fun decorating our new house for Christmas! This is the first time I’ve ever had a mantel to decorate, and my girls and I had a blast getting it all […]

      Reply
    3. Our DIY House: 2014 Home Tour | The DIY Mommy says:
      August 18, 2014 at 9:40 am

      […] You can see the doors to my craft room / office at the end of the living room, and we have a little corner there with some chalkboard art and a wee craft table for the girls. Our fireplace and mantel were designed by me and my mom, and we built it ourselves. […]

      Reply
    4. Christmas Mantel Decorating Tricks (Video) | The DIY Mommy says:
      December 11, 2015 at 7:00 am

      […] room, and it’s also something we designed and built very carefully when we built our home. (You can see how we built our mantel here.) This Christmas, I opted for neutral colored decor on our mantel, but there’s still lots of […]

      Reply

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