Finishing Our Antique Mantle

July 5, 2017 Courtney Foster Shearer

We finally pulled the trigger on a finishing treatment for our 100+ year old fireplace surround in our dining room!

If you have been following along ( here and here) you know we were torn on how to treat the finish of this jewel. As much as we loved the existing dark stained look, the overall finish was in rough shape and we knew it would have to be addressed.

To make matters more complicated the piece is pretty fragile. There are a lot of delicate details throughout, which is what makes it so beautiful,but it also makes it susceptible to chipping so we knew a huge amount of sanding or messing with the piece in general would not be ideal. So, we decided painting was the way to go.

We taped off around the mantle, and more importantly around the new marble surround.

Then we pushed the dining room table back and created a Dexter-esque room with floor to ceiling plastic to ensure no paint or paint dust would make it's way to the rest of the room/house.

With everything prepped we were ready to paint. We decided on Stone Hearth by Benjamin Moore, a nice creamy taupe in a gloss finish. We felt like the taupe would bring the elegance while the glossy finish would accentuate all of the beautiful detailing throughout this piece. We loaded up our trusty paint gun and got to work.

Brent sprayed the entire piece with one thick coat of paint and we let it dry for a few days. Once dry we were extremely happy with the color but noticed we had a lot of caulking to do. The lighter color definitely covered up some of the missing wood chunks, but it also brought out all of the cracks and imperfections.

We filled in all of the holes.....

... and then sprayed on another coat.

Next, we got out the sand paper and sanded down any imperfections/runs in the paint and then applied our final coat of paint.

Once that paint was dry I could not pull that plastic covering down fast enough.

Eeek!

What do you guys think? Did we do the mantle justice? We are loving it and can't wait to build the whole room around this statement piece.

The next step? We plan to add walnut trim around the fireplace to fill all of the open holes from the previous mantle. If you follow me on Instagram you know that Brent and I popped into an awesome wood shop the other day and came home with some great wood. Here is a little sneak peek of what's to come......

All photos are my own.