Changing of the Mantle {7 months in}
After the fireplace facelift, I went back and forth with what to do with this large wall…of brick. Mantle or no mantle? Ironwork? Move the TV? I think it will certainly evolve over time but for Christmas I’d made up my mind and decided that I wanted a mantle. It’s all I wanted.
No jewels (I’m no Cleopatra!) or clothes (I even put my Stitch Fix on hold). All I wanted was a mantle. I even called a couple of contractors to see what prices were for something custom. I got one quote that seemed absurd to me…to the point where I almost dropped the one thing that I actually wanted for Christmas! That was until we went to a place in Columbia called Southeastern Salvage on a whim one Saturday afternoon. We were just walking around, with no real direction for anything specific, and there it was. My mantle.
At the time it was a distressed white and had 3 “layers”. Standing there in the store I said to Andrew, “it’s perfect…without the bottom layer!” to which my handy man said, “I can take that bottom part off if you don’t want it.” I love him. He’s amazing. The price was perfect (even on sale!) so we walked out with my Christmas present. {After paying for it, of course!} Once home, he went to work on taking off the bottom portion and cleaning it up a bit. Our friend DJ came over the next day and helped Andrew get the anchors set into the brick and up went my gift!
Of course now that I had the mantle I wondered, how will I decorate it? I hadn’t had a mantle in a few years and the one I’d had prior was pretty basic. Mirror, fake foliage, picture frames…you know, the standard. I didn’t want that. I wanted something that would change with the Seasons or Holidays. Enter our good friend Pinterest! I started a board called “Mantle Ideas” and took ideas from that to create a few seasonal looks that I liked.
Here is the changing of the mantle…remember, I’m a simple kind of girl:
