After alot of careful planning the mantle shelf is just about finished.   Once it was all planned out, the acutal building wasn’t too difficult.  I cut the boards down to size, used a buddy’s planer to surface the boards, followed by a bit of hand sanding.  The assembley was easy enough although a pair of errant shots with the nail gun made life a bit difficult.  It looks great as is, but to protect it (and because the wife wants it to match the rest of the trim) I still need to stain it and put some poly on it.  I was hoping to have it be strong enough that a little kid could hang off it, but since its a 9″ board cantilevered straight out I’m not sure its that strong. It will however easily support anything we’d want to put on it.