With the completion of the mantle shelf, the family room is now complete.  I’m quite happy with how the mantle turned out, this picture (shot at night with no flash) doesn’t do it justice.  The cherry wood was stained with two coats of  American Walnut Minwax stain, to match the rest of the trim in the room.  Three coats of Wipe-On Poly were then put on to protect it and give it a bit of a sheen.   I really like the Wipe-On, as it is incredibly easy to use and leaves a great finish.  However it is quite expensive, and I’ve read it is just regular oil based poly that has been thinned down.

The design for the mantle shelf started many months ago when we first were figuring out what we wanted to do to the fireplace.  Jess and I decided that we didn’t want a full mantle as that would be too formal for the family room.  Instead we decided that we would just do a relatively simple mantle shelf.  Jess had a pair of little pre-made knick-knack shelves and we decided to get something similar to those.   Therefore I cut a 2×4 to the right size, and bolted it to the wall before we put up the stones around the fireplace, and then pretty much forgot about the shelf until everything else was finished.

With the family room just about complete I started lookign into shelves, and found that although I could find some that we liked online, they weren’t going to be the right size, and were extremely expensive.  I gave it some thought, and after realizng it was basicly just going to be two boards with a piece of molding on the front I decided to build my own.   The first step was to build a mockup showing that I could get something decent looking.  Thats the one on the left, which I slapped together in a few minutes to make sure that Jess and I were on the same page before I went and bought some wood.  After I bought the wood I then had to figure out how to put it all together without any obvious fasteners, while still being strong enough for a little kid to hang off of.

I built the 2nd mockup to try out some different techniques, as well as to determine the proper spacing between the various parts.  The final design I came up with was a 3/4″ board with a 45 degree bevel on the front.  I then screwed through that into the molding, and also through the back of it into the top board.  This provided a stong joint with no fasteners showing.  To support the board, I cut a 4×4 down to about 3″ thick,  and screwed through that into the top.   The bottom was then screwed into this board as well, so that the only visible fasteners would be on the underside, in the back, where no-one would acutally see them.

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.

Since we decided not to mess with the firebox, nor replace the rather ugly gas logs, we got a nice door to cover it instead.  The door with its tinted glass looks a lot nice than the bare fireplace did, and hides the old brick as well.   Choosing a door was a bit of a scare.  We first went to a specialty fireplace store, and while they had some very nice doors, the cheapest was at least a grand.  Far more than we were looking to spend.   Fortunately,  Lowes had a handful of doors for around $250, and we liked this one just as well as any of the far more expensive ones.  I’m finding that this is frequently the case, a specialty store will have a better selection, however everything is an order of magnitude more expensive than Lowes, and the quality doesn’t seem to be significantly better.  Installing the door over the stone veneer was a bit tricky, but I was able to screw it directly into the brick without to much trouble.

While I was busy spackeling, sanding, and painting, Jess was hard at work cutting, staining and sealing the baseboard and the door trim.   As soon as I was finished painting, I was then able to install all of the trim in just a few minutes, thanks to my brad nailer.  The trim has two coats of American Walnut stain on it, and then three coats of Minwax Wipe-On Polyurethane.  I was very happy with the Wipe-on Poly.  Its extremaly easy and fool-proof to apply, and although it needs multiple coats, it can be done with just a rag and doesn’t show any brush strokes. However it is rather expensive, and after reading up on it, I’ve learned that it is just regular oil based polyurethane thinned with mineral spirits.  Next time I will probably by the much cheaper regular polyurethane and thin it myself.

We’ve been on vacation in Seattle (pictures will be up soon!) for the last two weeks so I haven’t made any updates to the blog.  However before we were gone I was able to paint the family room.  We (and by we I mean Jess, while I smiled and nodded) choose a nice blue color.  I think it looks pretty good, and should look great with the dark brown carpet and the dark wood trim.  It should also keep the room nice and bright, which is a concern since the old room was so dark.  This time around we used the Behr paint from Home Depot.  No real reason than them having a paint chip that Jess liked.  Bonus was that it happened to be on sale when I got it.   So far I’ve used both the regular and the premium Valspar paints from Lowes, as well as the Regal paint from Benjamin Moore.  I think the Regal paint was the best, but the Behr seems next best.