My Living Room Project, Part II

On June 25th, I described a Living Room home project I was about to begin. Since that initial report I’ve made progress and have completed the following two items:

• replace the fire screen/tools with a new black glass door enclosure for the firebox; and
• replacing the dated mantle shelf with a custom built modern wrap around oak mantle that breaks the vertical line of the fireplace and ties in the two custom built-in book-shelves.

Here’s a couple of photos (click on them for full size images). I designed and built the wrap-around mantle out of White Oak to match the shelves on either side of the fireplace. The mantle shelf is almost twelve inches wide.

As a wrap around this new mantle is an important design detail, tying the two oak bookshelves together and breaking the vertical line of the brick column.

In the photos, you may notice wires coming from the top center of the mantle. These wires include an electrical cable and a HDMI cable for the TV, as well as speaker wire for a center speaker that will be on the mantle. These wires run through a built-in wire channel in the mantle to the bookcase on the let side of the fireplace, where the audio/video devices will eventually be located.

The fireplace door enclosure was a purchased kit I assembled and mounted. Replacing the old iron fire screen made the fireplace look cleaner and more contemporary.

So the project continues…

My next step will be attaching the TV mount above the mantle. Once that’s done I’ll pull wires to the bookshelves on the left of the fireplace where I’m relocated the audio/video devices.

( More updates to come )