Renovations, The Buffalo BurrowInstalling a Vintage Mantel in the Dining Room February 11, 2020 This is a sponsored post by Lowe’s Home Improvement. All opinions are 100% my own. I’ve always dreamed of an “old house” dining room with loads of character. When the vision was born for this room at the Burrow, I was so excited. I knew all of those charming details would create the dining room I’d dreamed of. One that was at home in a really old house, but just happened to be sitting in our brand new build. A lot of finish work happened in this room all at once and I have so much to share! This week, I’m going to break down the progress into three posts about each piece of the room to show you how we crafted the character in here. Today, I’m going to share details on how we installed that beauty of a vintage mantel. But first, if you missed the posts on this room so far, you can catch up here: Every old house we’ve renovated has had more than one bricked-up mantel. I absolutely loved having those mantels for character and never minded they weren’t open and working. I’ve always dreamed of a fireplace in our dining room. While ideally, it would’ve been in our budget to make this an actual working fireplace, it definitely wasn’t. But I knew we could still add the character I was dreaming of on a much smaller budget by installing a vintage mantel! If you want more info on how we found the mantel, you can read about it in the design plan post above. The first thing we had to do was to build out a section of the wall where the mantel would go. While this does make it look like an actual old fireplace that was bricked up, I also wanted to create two indentions on each side for built-ins. And now, the mantel is installed! Here she is, friends. The only hard part about this process was sourcing the right vintage mantel. And even that turned out to be easier than I thought! I’ve loved these old double mantels for years and we found one at the right price at one of our favorite salvage spots. We scored this baby for $175! To attach it to the wall, we screwed through the face of the mantel and into the studs. Remember, we added this build-out in the wall solely for this purpose, so we made sure that studs were installed where we needed them to secure it. Since we’re painting the mantel to match the board and batten in the room, it was not an issue to screw into the face of the mantel knowing we’ll patch and paint it later. You’ll never see them! Ahh, character already. I can’t wait to enjoy the focal point this creates and to decorate it! Another mantel for Christmas garlands…always a win. Unrelated to the mantel, but I’m so in love with that huge wall-size window in here. It allows so much natural light to flood in! And you can catch a glimpse of the board and batten starting there as well. Here’s another glimpse of that for you! Chris moves fast when it comes to trim and finish work. All of these carpentry updates were happening at the same time. I’m going to talk about the board and batten in detail this week! Once the mantel was installed on the wall, we needed to do some finishing prior to painting. First, we added a mirror from Lowe’s into the opening between the mantels. This old mantel would’ve originally had a mirror here. The salvage store where we found this actually had one with the mirror still intact, but it was in really rough shape. We got a frameless mirror the right size from Lowe’s and Chris glued it to the wall with this glass glue. We installed shoe molding around the mirror opening to frame out and finish the edges between the mirror and mantel. (And you can see other glimpses above. Like I said, the carpentry in this room all happened at the same time as materials arrived. More to come on those built-ins this week as well!) The last piece of finishing out the mantel was to add a brick panel in the opening. We used this inexpensive Embossed Red Brick Hardboard Wall Panel. The brick pattern isn’t printed onto the panel, there is real brick texture. Once this is painted, you won’t be able to tell it isn’t real brick! Just like the mirror above, we trimmed out the opening with shoe molding to finish it. Some of you asked about the missing piece of molding on the bottom left corner. Chris installed a new piece to match the other side. Once it’s all painted the same color, you’ll never notice it wasn’t original! Remember, all of the carpentry in this room will be painted that lovely creamy tan/gray, HGTV Home by Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray. So the whole mantel area will be painted this lovely color: I can’t even express how excited I am to see this dining room come together. I’ve been dreaming about my board and batten with floral wallpaper “old” dining room for nearly a decade now. I know I shared this in the design plans post, but I can’t resist sharing again. Remember, here’s how the colors play together and with the kitchen design. HG V Home by Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray |York Wallcoverings Floral Wallpaper | Blue & White Patterned Tile | HGTV Home by Sherwin Wiliams Escape Gray I designed these rooms to play hand in hand and I cannot wait to see them actually finished side by side! Stay tuned this week for a post on the board and batten in here, details about the built-ins we created, and a video tour of this space with all of these updates finished and ready for paint!
Corinna - TheBohoAbode says February 13, 2020 at 4:42 pm I am swooning so hard for this! It was always my dream to build a bump out for my mantel to attach to but this isn’t our forever house so I skipped it… this time. Haha. The mantel you’ve picked is my dream mantel. Absolutely stunning! Reply