Building A Faux Mantel From an Old Mirror Frame

By: Stacy Verdick Case
On: November 10, 2020

The holidays are coming! It’s time to deck the halls and what better way than with a faux mantel!

Full disclosure here I am not keeping my faux mantel. I’m creating one to make my booth at Picket Fence Gals look amazing for the December sale! I think my second booth needs a home run center piece. I feel like I’ve neglected it a little bit since acquiring it a couple months ago.

Does This Look Like A Faux Mantel to You?

Okay so I didn’t go out looking for a mantel. I was clued into an Estate sale by one of the other vendors at the last sale so I stopped on the way home. There I found an antique mirror frame with the mirror broken out and part of the frame missing. It was $5.

No lie I didn’t see her flaws. I saw a mantel.

It wasn’t until I brought it home and NO ONE else could see what I saw that I understood this was going to be a hard sell.

Enter the OG

So for those of you who are new here, I call my dad the OG. He says it stands for “Old Guy” but we know the truth. He’s the one who taught me all I know so he is the original gangster.

The OG is one of the only people who when I have a hair brained idea that no one else can see will just dive in head first and say okay let’s do it! Even when he doesn’t understand. So I called him and said I have a mirror frame that wants to be a mantel. He said, “Bring it over.”

He has all the really great tools I knew we’d need to knock this out of the park.

The Parts

I went through my parts bins because I just knew I had an antique door header that would be amazing as the actual mantel part. I located some 1×6 scraps that were about the right length to create the top. I thought I had what we needed to make the side but I did have to buy two, four foot sections of 1×6 pine boards (I couldn’t fit the 8 foot board into my car so we went with 2 four foot sections).

Door Header and Scraps — Door Header & Scrap Wood

It wasn’t all scrap parts but I was able to use a lot of my scraps up.

The Assembly

Originally I thought I would leave the frame completely intact but there was a beveled edge on the frame that made it difficult to cleanly attach the door header. So we ended up banging the frame apart.

Here’s where I need to tell you I forgot to start the camera and missed the whole in process part of the putting it together. I know. I KNOW! I’m sad too. Yes, I feel horrible about it. You know how it goes. You get excited to get into a project and thoughts of photographing go right out the window. I am not Pinterest worthy at this moment.

Imagine gluing and nailing the pieces together. While you’re at it imagine me 60 pounds lighter and 8 inches taller. Once you’re done imagining your come up with this!

All the Pieces Assemble — All the pieces assembled

This is her laid on the ground so the glue wouldn’t drip down the front. But she’s of course not done.

I took her home and brought here into the she shop to give her some filler. The long line across the top where the two piece of scrap wood meet needs to filled so the top feels like one cohesive piece.

Fin the cracks in the Faux Mantel — Using wood filler on the joint

Then I filled he holes from where the door header was once installed in it’s previous life.

Fill all the holes in the front of the mantel

This is where I have to leave the project for now until the wood filler dries. Unfortunately because it is raining in my state it didn’t dry today so I wasn’t able to sand an paint. Stay tuned and see how this mantel finally turns out when she get’s pretty!

It’s safe to say that my family sees a mantel now when they look at her even without the paint.

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