Proud owners of a Mantel

Yesterday Rory finished installing our fir wood mantel he built. He really did a great job building it despite all the tough elements, like the fact that its 9 feet long, curved, huge and the delicate mitered seams.
You can't even tell its not a solid piece of wood.



Here is a shot of the inside, its a plywood box with an inch of solid fir wood over it for the outside.



The estimate from the custom woodworker in town was $1610.00 to built it the same way out of Fir. It was going to be $2163.00 out of Walnut. We decided to make it out of Fir from the lumber supply for about $40 with the plywood.
We figured stain would do the work to make it look how we envisioned, an old world Spanish beam. So once it was installed and done we got up close and personal distressing it, Rory used his electric wire wheel to speed up the process, we even put in faux termite damage, and the usual dings bangs and scratches.



In a flash it transformed into a dark, and beautifully rich looking beam with just a little bit of walnut stain. We plan to finish it with an old world look using Briwax or a satin varnish tomorrow.


Here it is spills and all, of course we are going to completely resurface the stucco so those spills and test spots will soon be all one color. But doesn't the wood look great?