Your Handmade Home Magazine December 2017

I knew I wanted a chunky mantle made out of reclaimed wood, and hubby,
of course, wanted the largest television he could fit above the mantle.
So, we needed to engineer the framing of the mantle to make sure it would
hold the weight of both.
My husband used scrap blocks of wood to provide additional structure
and threaded the electrical outlet through the new structure for the television.
Since we knew we wanted TV components to sit within the bookshelves
surrounding the new mantle, rather than on the mantle itself, my
husband created a little tube
within the new bookshelves
to house the cable lines for
the television.
Even though we had measured
where we wanted
the television to be hung,
we neglected to look at the
mounting system we purchased
until a bit later. We
realized we would have to
move the outlet and box to
accommodate the mounting
brackets. Oops! Luckily, it
was only a minor setback,
which we discovered before
we had enclosed the shelving.
My husband installed huge lag bolts to hold the mantle in place, and then
carefully measured the rear of the mantle to drill the holes so they lined
up with the bolts. The test fit was a success! (I’m so glad I was just the apprentice
on this job – my husband is very good at the whole “measure
twice, cut once” thing!)
Then, finally, it was time to make the mantle pretty! I had researched the
heck out of our preferred mantle surface, which was stone. I found a manufactured
stone which was a favorite of pro contractors. It was lighter and
less expensive than real stone but looked like the real thing. One of our
local stores had a huge selection in stock, and also had beautiful displays
set up so that I could see what I was really getting instead of relying on a
Google image. Win, win!
There were several different colors, styles and installation types of the
stone, and we ultimately decided on the stacked stone “panel” version. This
product gave us the look of stacked stone without the need for a professional
stone mason to actually fit the stone together. There were different
lengths of stone pieces and different configurations so we tried to randomly
place the stones as much as possible to get that perfectly imperfect look.
Before we started to set the stone, we installed cement board and taped
and put mud on all the seams and screws. These are boring and tedious but
important parts of the project that I might’ve rushed through. That’s why I
couldn’t be trusted to do this project on my own!
After using a spacer along the bottom of the fireplace which would allow
the flooring to be installed underneath the stone, we finally began placing
the stones. I was excited to get those first few rows up, and finally felt like
we were making progress! After a lot of research, here’s the method we
used and a few tips and tricks:
* We laid out several of each type of stone on the floor (corners, short
lengths, medium lengths, and long lengths) and then preassembled the
rows two to three at a time. That way, we could make sure that we were
staggering joints and using a variety of patterns of the stones. There was
only one spot where we didn’t notice that several of the same size stones
were stacked on top of each other. But we got lucky because the TV covers
most of that area.