Mantle Shelf

Along with the view from the back deck, the fireplace was a clincher for me when I found this house. There’s something nice about a fire in the middle of winter.

The existing facade was nothing special, just some manufactured stone productin large slabs. Also, it was incredibly dark, so it really had no character to speak of. I knew I wanted a shelf of some sort, and I figured I’d eventually get around to building one. After I purchased my plasma tv, the mantle shelf moved up on the priority list pretty quickly.

Here’s the initial design:

mantleshelf-front

mantleshelf-top

(here’s a PDF that includes dimensions)

And here’s the finished product:

mantleshelf

mantlesupport

It’s pretty basic, relying mostly on the lines of the house. One particularly nice detail is the setback of the shelf dividers.

Originally I intended for the shelf to float unsupported, but 110 pounds of television warranted the support columns. I’m not entirely happy with them, and I’m still bother by how dark the surround is, so I think in the spring I’m going to remove the support columns and add a flat stone facade. Once I get the stone in and decided on paint for the walls, I’ll finally finish the wood. Currently I’m thinking it’ll end up staining it a rich teak followed by a few coats of polyurethane.

PROJECT COSTS

Money: Approximately $75
Time: 4-5 hours

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One Response to “Mantle Shelf”

  1. Comments are still slightly borked for the time being. I can now get all the comment text, but any paragraph formatting is lost. Please comment as normal, and I'll keep working to get things straightened out.
  1. [...] If you’ve seen the project page dedicated to the Mantle Shelf David and I built for the fireplace, you’ll know already that I’m thinking real hard about putting a stone veneer of some sort over the fireplace and under the shelf. I just really, really, really, hate how dark it is right now. And as I think about how that space will look once the balcony is built, it’s going to be that much darker. [...]

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