There is a new show on one of the cable networks in which a giant cherry red eighteen-wheeler shows up to renovate Susie's house. I'm willing to bet that inside that fancy truck is a large array of sweet power tools, many of which are probably very heavy, expensive, and many things that many of us broke new homeowners simply can't afford right now.
In real life home renovation, we don't always have the money or the room to have the top of the line tools that so many experts demonstrate with online or on TV. But that doesn't mean we have to pay someone the minute something is a little more difficult than hanging a picture.
For my fireplace mantel project, I was able to do all the work with a 7 dollar mitre box, a hammer, and my famed cheese spreader. For more details about the mitre box and why you need mitre cuts, see my next post coming up entitled,
I have a mitre box and I'm not afraid to use it.
In this case I did have to outsource the larger mantel shelf piece to 11 Fillmore Drive aka my friend Tim's basement for one cut. Typically though, you can get one or two straight cuts done at the Big Box Home Improvement Store if you do your measuring right ahead of time. Just make sure you check it before you take it home. In my case, the guy who offered to cut my wood on the store saw wasn't actually someone who worked for the store.....
These are the photos of how I completed my dining room fireplace project, which took more carpentry type work (aka sawing back and forth many many times) since I had to start from scratch.
Note: For more detailed directions for many of my projects, I plan to have some "realistic recipes" for many of my projects on my pages soon.
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| sans mantel |
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| three pieces of wood make a frame |
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| create base frame |
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| attach frame to wall stud and glue down |
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| frame attached! |
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| glue down and attach shelf |
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| adhere crown moulding and paint |
Though it certainly takes a bit more "chutzpa", it feels good to build something elegant without power tools. If the Pyramids and Stonehenge came to be without electricity or table saws, what's a couple of mantels?
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