How To Build Wood Fireplace Surround – In this year’s Christmas decorations post, we mentioned that we wanted to build some sort of mantel for the fireplace this month and, well, Santa brought it!
Yes, even though setting the goal of having a place to hang our kids’ socks was a bit haphazard, we were happy to have the motivation to quickly cross this project off our list.
How To Build Wood Fireplace Surround
Here’s a larger shot of that area right after we arrived, just for fun. Ah, those quilts that fold like curtains #MEMORY.
Diy Faux Fireplace And Mantel
Sjerrie worked over the summer to spruce it up, such as scraping and painting the surrounding black and lightening the interior brickwork with paint. And in an unexpected twist that even I didn’t see coming, she finished it all off with some crystal “logs” (because it’s a non-working fireplace, more on that here). So here’s where we last blogged about it:
The look has been much improved, but we still wanted a little more dimension and some sort of cape. And, more fundamentally, something about the rough transition from metal cladding to plaster. We were excited to tackle this as a DIY since this is actually the third fireplace surround project we’ve taken on.
Our first house was built about 8 years ago on top of our second house, which consisted of resurfacing the old brick cabinets and adding marble tile (you can see the final result here). Then, a few years later, we built a new siding for our latest home, this time using leftover marble countertops to create the ambience:
We loved how both of these fireplaces turned out, but with this third fireplace project we wanted something more modern for our more modern home (you can see the exterior here and here). In general, lately we’ve been moving more towards cleaner lines and a more modern silhouette for most things (maybe the comfy beach house vibe, or the desire to lean in a different direction than we’ve been for more than a long period). traditional things, decade). ).
Easy Diy Wood Mantel
So we found some inspiration for modern fireplaces, like this one and this one, and immediately thought they would fit well. With a general direction on where we wanted to go, we just needed to figure out how to implement something like this (we were aiming for something relatively quick and easy versus something that would make our bedroom feel like a construction zone for months).
The final look was something we came up with based a bit on the wood and molding options available in the shop. One of my favorite ways to plan a build like this is to lay out several pieces of wood in different combinations on the floor of the hardware store to glue together something that looks good.
In this case, I sent Sherry photos (as pictured) of each option above to make sure we were on the same page. The good news is that there’s something you can easily recreate this weekend! And it only cost us $105!
As you can see in the image above, the case is the same on all three sides and is sort of like an inverted U (at least that’s what we talked about between us). We discussed different thicknesses and depths, but ended up with 9 inches wide on all three sides of the U and 4 inches deep along the outside edge (anything deeper would pop into the room a little more than we wanted) .
Fireplace Mantel Clearances
It is basically constructed by creating a “hidden bracket” attached to the wall and then cut to create the final look. You can see what I’m talking about in the clip I mocked up below using some cropped pieces.
That’s just some 1 x 2″, 1 x 3″, 1 x 4″, 1 x 6″ and 1 x 8″ base boards (you can see them labeled above). The only “decorative” trim piece is an interior corner molding cheap that you can buy at any hardware store. All the bracket pieces can be plain blank boards, so they won’t be visible, but I chose pre-loaded boards for everything that is visible (my store was out of plain 1×2″ boards , so you’ll see that I’m using primed 1×2).
Honestly, the hardest part was just the basic math. You know, making sure we put the bracket in the right place so that our finished piece of furniture is exactly where we want it (we’ll have some exposed plaster and black metal around it). It may be difficult to see in some of these photos (especially in the straight shots), but we purposely left some plaster and skirting visible on each of the outside edges of the fireplace, rather than completely surrounding the cabinetry from wall to wall. another and let them go…, from corner to corner.
The result is a nice, clean wall corner (with the baseboard following it into the corner) and then into our closet where just a little plaster is exposed on each side of the front of the fireplace column. It looks nice and dimensional like this, and the real miracle is that we took all the right measurements, so it turned out exactly as we hoped.
Easy Diy Faux Fireplace For The Living Room
After carefully removing the floorboard (since we’ll be reinstalling some of it later), we started building the bracket. The bracket is three simple 1×6 inch boards attached in the upside down U shape I mentioned above.
I attached the top on two sides with pocket holes, but they don’t have to be pocket holes because they will all get hidden eventually. In fact, if it’s easier, you can attach each piece to the wall individually. Before nailing anything to the wall, make sure all the boards are straight and square.
We finished it with 1×2″ boards along the inside and outside edges, with a stud securely fastened to the wall in several places. This will help pull your cabinet design away from the wall a little, creating the dimension we’re looking for. Again, the depth we chose was 4 inches, but if you want that depth, use a thicker wood for this step.
These edge pieces will be completely hidden, so they don’t need to look good. In other words, you don’t need fancy angles and can assemble scraps for this part. They don’t need to be refilled (again, this is what my store had in stock that day). Oh, and we used some wood glue with our nail gun to make them sturdier.
Diy Fireplace Makeover
These two steps complete the hidden part of the cloak, so now let’s move on to the visible parts of the construction.
Although these next parts appear, the steps are very similar to what we are doing now. We started by using carefully made cuts to get finished corners and well-angled joints where the two boards meet. First, we added two 1×8-inch footplates on each side of the bracket:
Once again we used wood glue and nails to attach all of our parts. This is always a good combination for long-term storage, as individual nails can cause cracking or loosening over time. Not my cleanest wood glue, but it worked!
Next, we carefully measured and cut the top and joined the two vertical boards together to make it look nice (let’s say together).
What Kind Of Wood To Make A Mantel?
Now, as you can see in this cropped graph, our 1×8 inch was slightly wider than the bottom bracket (see how it comes out at the bottom left?). It’s not a problem, I’m just pointing it out because you want to make sure you account for it in your calculations and make sure which way it comes out (we chose the inside edge). None of the nails are visible, so this is really something to consider so you know where to file your nails and get a centered result.
With the flat front panels attached, we cut the sides again (kind of like we did with the elbow piece). We chose 1×4″ around the outside edge to add extra depth and used the cuts again so we didn’t have any raw wood on the sides or corners.
Then we went around the inside edge with a slightly smaller 1×3″ liner board. A 1×3 inch board hung from the edge of the front panel
Since the 1×4 inches on the outside edge stick out even more, we added a very simple inside corner shape to give the outside edge a little more detail. We were reluctant to add excessive or too elaborate moldings here because we didn’t want our modern furniture to be too traditional, so we felt that was enough.
Diy Fireplace Mantel Surround
When we went into the fireplace project, we weren’t
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