I'm not sure why, but the mantle in our 1969 condo is just 2 inches deep (see photo here). As you can imagine, there's very little you can put on such a mantle; no picture frames, small pieces of art, etc. We're finally getting to the stage in our home updating that we want to start getting some art and personalization going, and the mantle is a great place to start.
This project will extend the mantle out to 5.5 inches and finally give us the room we need to decorate the area around our fireplace a bit.
I've bought 10 feet of red oak that I'll be attaching to the existing mantle, along with a small section of oak molding that I'll use to eliminate the 90 degree angle caused by the new mantle top. The wood is fairly irrelevant though, because even though it's quite pretty, it will be painted over to match everything.
All in all, should be a pretty short project: I'm shooting for a timeline of one week.
