How We Mantel

I love our master bedroom. It's in the basement, it's very large, and it's all ours. When my husband and I bought our house, the whole basement was unusable space to us. It was unfinished and had been used as a wood workshop by my husband's grandfather (the previous owner). After a couple years of thinking and drawing and dreaming, we remodeled the entire basement, adding a second family room with a bar and transforming the former wood shop into our master suite.

One problem: we were so busy moving into our new space and putting our furniture in place and our clothes in the new closet (not to mention moving one child to our old master and then having a third and then fourth baby), that we sort of forgot about accessorizing. See that big old empty space above the bed?

A huge amount of empty wall begging me to do something, anything!



Remember the two brand new mantels I scored from Goodwill for 15 bucks a piece? I knew one would be perfect centered above our bed. I originally saw the idea in the latest Pottery Barn catalog and fell in love.

Pottery Barn Decorative Ledge

Rather than fork over $349 for Pottery Barn's version, I decided to create my own. Enter Goodwill $15 Mantel Number One. The mantels had a light maple finish (which would just not fly), so I painted both of them with the same white paint we'd used for all of the downstairs trim. Because I wanted a slightly distressed look (not as drastic as Pottery Barn's), I brushed them over with the warmer creamy white that we used for our upstairs trim and cabinets.

The finished product:

A closeup of the paint to show you the warmer color I used over the white.

I threw a wreath and a candleholder from other Goodwill trips on top of the mantel and then did a little home project framing a W to complete the look.

Stay tuned to see where I used our second Goodwill mantel!