Floating Mantel

I have seen so many floating mantels on hgtv, on blogs, everywhere.  Our fireplace wall needed some omph and I really wanted a rough hewn mantel to give it more of a presence in the room.  I found a great tutorial from Addicted 2 Decorating.  Anyone can do this!
I am now figuring out how to decorate it.  So if you have any good ideas, let me know or send me links.

If you want to know some details of how we did this, here you go!

We used 3 boards for the bulk of the project.  We got 1 extra long to have extra scraps for the ends of the mantel.

We banged the boards with hammers, screw drivers, and pliers.  Then I stained them with dark walnut stain.  After that dried, I put on a coat of poly to seal it.  I could have done more coats, but I wanted it to remain more "rough."

With the boards dry, we hooked 2 together with 3 L brackets.

Since it's impossible to use a power drill in the narrow space, we attached the L brackets on the other side first.

This included the end brackets to brace the ends.  Make sure to measure in the right distance for these ones.

We had to attach a bracket to the 2 boards already connected for the end pieces as well.

This is what the boards looked like screwed together.  Since we had connected the L brackets on the single piece, we just had to drill down to connect it to the bottom piece.

This is slightly fuzzy, but it's showing the end brackets waiting for the end pieces to attach to them.

And the Hubs continued his muscle-strength show and screwed those on.  I kinda like him.

So we didn't do a bracket for the bottom edge, but should have.  This was an easy solution using a screw to keep it from wiggling.
We had the kids write all over the inside of the "snake coffin" (it really did look like that) and then we took it inside.  

I totally forgot to take pictures of our wall during the mounting process.  We had no nice supports waiting for us to easily attach our mantel to the wall.

SO...finding the studs, we attached our own 2x4 about 4 feet long.  (Measuring the right place to put this is really important).  We drilled 2 long L brackets onto the 2x4 so the top of the mantel would have some support once it was in place.  (Am I making sense?)  

We lifted our "snake coffin," set it onto the 2x4, the L brackets resting on the inside top of the mantel, and drilled from the top of the mantel into the 2x4.  

Wow, I don't know if that made sense to you all.  But it's secure and I love it.

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2 comments:

  1. Looks great! I love mantles and am SO sad that where we are living doesn't have one! Now you can hang your stockings in style this Christmas!

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  2. I love it! You guys are amazing! Ahh-- the things to look forward to when I own my own home! :)

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