Mantle In The Master Bedroom

Last week I posted on Instagram a sneak peak of a project we recently finished.  I asked if anyone could guess in which room it was, so if you guessed the Master Bedroom, you guessed right! We have had this project in mind for awhile, but there were a lot of pieces to the puzzle of actually getting it done. We had this little hutch/ entertainment center piece that housed a lot of my book collection and on top was a heavy, outdated TV. I actually loved that TV because you could play DVDs and old VHSs and you could watch cable. It was like a 3 in 1! But it always worried me to have a TV that was so heavy there. I was always freaked out one of the girls were going to knock it over on top of them. So we knew that we wanted to get a flat screen TV that was mounted to the wall and we thought it would be cool to do a faux fireplace underneath.

When we started to look for antique fireplace mantles, we found that they were both hard to find (especially in the dimensions we needed) and ridiculously expensive! So our search lasted a while to find the perfect one. We finally found just the top mantle piece from a second hand home store in Seattle. It was covered in SO many layers of paint and it was probably 100 years old. We thought that if we took that piece and then just created the side parts with wood boards, we could still get the look we wanted. I spent many days in our garage putting layer after layer of stripper on the mantle to get off all the layers of paint. But it was so worth it, because eventually all the gorgeous wood that was underneath started to come through. After that I just lightly painted it again with some chalk paint and then distressed it a little so that the pretty wood underneath would show through. Then we (my husband) just screwed them into the wall. We also added an additional board to the top so that I had a wider space to put things. The mantle isn't even attached to the side boards; each piece is just individually screwed in. I am not going to be putting anything super heavy up there (just décor) so it was really just looks we were going for.

And here is how it turned out!





Isn't it so cute and cozy? We will eventually have a TV above the mantle, so I will have to move the cow print, but it is so cute for now. I love cows. I know they are supposed to be dumb animals, but they are so endearing and I love their eyes! I'm so excited that now I have two mantles in the house to decorate!



I just threw this basket here for the photos, but I am not going to keep it here. I don't want to be tripping over it. It belonged to the girls and there are a few holes in it now, but I am going to try and see if I can get creative and find a fun way to fix it. I was thinking about lacing it up with yarn....





I love that my French egg chair is not just shoved in the corner anymore and you can really see it. It is my favorite piece of furniture that we own.





I got this cutie cow print from Hobby Lobby on my first trip there. I didn't know at the time where I was gonna put her, but I knew we'd find a place. I think she looks pretty at home here.





It's hard to tell in a photo, but I also recently got this stand up mirror and I love it! We have two sliding door mirrors in our master bathroom, but it is really nice to have an additional full length mirror. The girl's have always come into our bathroom to look at their outfits or dress up dresses and it's nice now that we are not crowding in front of one mirror. You can't have too many mirrors in a house full of girls!



Hope you enjoyed seeing our latest project! I think now that this room is finally "finished" (I feel like even when rooms are finished, they are still always evolving) I can do some before and after photos. Can you believe this room used to be poo brown? Well, it wasn't quite that bad. But it's so much better and it feels so good to have a peaceful room to retreat to after a long day. Have a good one friends!