To cap off the fireplace we needed some sort of mantle.  We decided taht a traditional mantle would look to formal with the stone we had chosen to surround the fireplace, so we instead decided to use just a mantle shelf.  After a bit of searching, and lots of thinking I decided to just build one myself instead of trying to buy one.  So the other day I went out and bought some nice cherry wood to build it out of.   It’s a pretty simple design, basicly just a shelf wrapped with crown molding.  The molding was initially a problem, since I don’t have a shaper to make my own.   After a bit of searching I was able to find a company in Ohio, Baird Brothers,  that had some beatuiful cherry molding that was actually pretty cheap.  Of course UPS charged more than the molding cost to ship it, but none the less its a great looking piece of wood.  Now its just up to me to assemble it and figure out how to attatch it to the masonary wall.