So the Mrs. And I found a great deal on a plasma after the Turkey Day holiday and picked it up. Of course that led to us wanting a new sound system, mantle, furniture.. etc… You know how it goes. I thought I'd share with you all. Here’s my build of the mantle:
Picture #1 = This is what our bland wall/fireplace looked like in the beginning. The basic builders mantle with slate surround. We never really used that part of the room.
Pic #2 = I ripped down the Mantle. Slate is still up.
Pic #3 = This is my second attempt at the legs for the mantle (The Mrs. didn’t like the feet on my first one). It’s basically a 10” column cut in ½, then put on a custom sled and run through the planer to true up the back, mounted to an MDF board. The top and bottom are generic column footings and caps cut in half (from HD). You’ll see in a later picture that I decided not to use the generic cap and made my own (which would make the final leg design my third!!!). Here it is before I changed the top:
Pic #4 = This is the final piece I used for the front of the face of the mantle. The next few pics will show how I cut it out:
Pic #5 = The jig for the arch. I drew an ellipse (from some hard to understand formula I found on the web, but eventually mastered , then mounted it on a piece of MDF which was mounted to a piece of plywood.
Pic #6 = I slid a large piece of MFD up to the middle piece of MDF (and under the ellipse)
Pic #7 = Got out my trusty router with a straight 1/2 inch cutting bit and followed the contour of the ellipse. This cut the perfect ellipse into the large MFD board. This picture shows it after I made the cut. NOTE: the new ellipse cutout produced here will be used later to make the molding which will fit below the arch.
Pic #8 = In this fuzzy pic, you can see that I created 2 of the arch panels and created a box to form the main arch of the mantel. It’s dry-fitted to the top of the mantle (upside-down). I actually bought the top piece of the mantle it is fitted in @ Lowes because it was cheaper than buying the wood and making it myself… If you like it, it called the “Heritage Oak 6’ “ and is at Lowes.