Fireplace Surround Update

Mar 24

It's the beginning of Spring break in these parts, but we are waiting to vacation later in April. Instead we're visiting with family and taking some time to work on projects around the house. Last I left you, this was the status of our family room fireplace. Lots of plans, little progress.

Enter Mr. DD and his big plans. Yup, that's graph paper and a scale ruler, people. He means business. Time to get to work.

Plus, having his handy father visit certainly upped the productivity factor.

Check out that pile of wood. And, that happy shopper. Amazing the amount of motivation to make something happen when your parents are in town. Gotta take advantage.

Once the work actually got started, it was clear that it wasn't going to be as easy as we had hoped. The brick chimney breast wasn't straight. The walls weren't level. There was a lot of tweaking that needed to happen.

First, we chiseled away the brick to make a somewhat straight line to work with. Then, cut away the baseboard to make room for the new boards that will cover the unfinished line between the wood paneling and the brick chimney breast.

10" boards were cut to shape with the use of templets fitted to the existing structure of the fire box. Then attached to the brick with tapcon screws.

This is where it all started to go a little pear shaped. We knew we wanted a floating rustic looking shelf, and thought maybe we could take the easy way out with a pre-existing, store bought mantel. It looked ok in the box, in the store, but in the actual space, not so much. Back to the drawing board.