Wood Mantle Progress | One Room Challenge: Week Six
Hey friends! It’s been a minute since I posted an update, coming back today to chat about the fireplace mantle so far and just generally how this (and all my projects!) are going.
I’ve been working on the mantle, little by little, over the past seven weeks. I usually spend 1-2 hours on it before I get frustrated with the quality of my work and take a break. I want the cuts to be cleaner, the angles to be more precise, the wood to be straighter, the grain to line up better, and I just want everything to be overall more perfect.
But you know what? Perfect is the enemy of good. And also a fallacy. No one’s home is perfect. My home is perhaps especially not perfect, with it’s crooked, textured walls and narrow doorways and too-low ceilings in the stairwells. But everyone I know from renters to owners, new reno’s to new builds could rhyme off a list of things in their home that aren’t perfect. Maybe being closer to perfect than this is a curse! Maybe if you’re that close to perfect you can’t rest with good. But this old house is never going to be perfect and if I can’t learn to be happy with, learn to love, good then I shouldn’t be here.
I could have had this mantle custom-built out of high quality materials. It would have cost a fortune, but it might have been perfect. But that would have meant not being able to afford art or the bathroom reno, or my desk, or patio furniture. The fireplace may have been perfect, but the rest of the house wouldn’t have been as good. So we’re here, we’re living with good, acknowledging that no one will ever notice the flaws in our work as much as we will, and we’re building a mantle, high-quality materials and wood-working skills be damned.
I wanted a wood mantle. Something warm, that would tie in the wood baseboards, trim and crown moulding in the living room, and that would break up the vast expanse of white on the walls and fireplace surround. The two fireplaces below were some of my inspiration.
I decided a wrap-around mantle would make a good focal point for the room now that the fireplace surround blended in better, and would ground the fireplace in the space. I ignored that this meant lots of weird angle cuts using skills and tools I do not possess from my 3 low-level wood-working projects to date. I charged forward.
I’m building the mantle, which will be a hollow-three sided “box” out of pine shelf-board. It’s cheap, it’s easy to work with, and it was easy to source curbside pickup during a pandemic. It’s assembled with wood glue and blocks of scrap wood screwed into the inside corners for strength.
It’s been a chore (feel free to check out my Instagram highlight “ORC” for the process thus far) but as of today (with some wonderful advice from my dad when I hit my breaking point and a tool borrowed from his neighbour (thank you Ian!) the top and front of the mantle are complete and I feel much better about finishing the bottom this week! Once it’s all built it’ll be sanded, wood-filled in any gaps and stained dark to match my coffee table (my first ever big project which is still taking a beating and going strong to this day).
Other small progress this week included hanging sconces on either side of our art which have brightened the living room dramatically!
Still to come is completing the mantle, repainting the window, and putting the rest of the room together. I also need to style the mantle and I’m kind of at a loss. Wreath? Mirror? Any suggestions are welcome!
As always make sure to check out the rest of the incredible projects (moving much faster than mine!) over at the One Room Challenge blog, and check back next week for the final update before the reveal!
