The story of my mantle
Our home has a good sized living room. It has a huge bay window in the front and great flow from both the foyer and dining room. It is a long room with a fireplace at one end of it. My sofa is situated in front of the window, and the unit with our television is directly across from it. When we first moved in there was only one problem. Above our fireplace, which has traditional woodwork and molding, was a huge mirror.
The game plan was to remove the mirror. It was held up by four huge clips, the definition of eye sore, and had been sitting there for at least 50 years. I’m not kidding. I knew it was going to take some work to get down. It was not only held in place by the clips, it was stuck into the plaster of our walls. Big messy job.
I decided to start searching the internet instead. I came up with some samples of homes with mirrors installed over their fireplaces. I liked the look. This is actually my first home with a fireplace and mantle. I never liked the idea of hanging a random picture or piece of artwork over the fireplace. A mirror to me is very generic and hard to get tired of.
I did some sketches for our contractor, took a trip with him to Home Depot to pick out molding, and pieced it together. The mantle itself was cut across the top so that the new molding would sit flush. It was built up to surround the mirror and mimic the fireplace below.
It was framed out so it actually looks like it is original to the house. Stopping it just short of the ceiling meant we didn’t have to cut into the crown molding.
It was a simple solution to what could have been a messy project. I’m glad I held off and didn’t listen to all the opinions around me telling me to just rip it off. These “opinions” came back later to tell me it looked good anyway.
Are there decisions you’ve made by going with your gut feeling?
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