Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
During my remodel I found a fireplace hidden behind drywall and located a beautiful chestnut mantle surround on Craigslist for $150, guy was nuts – it’s worth 10x’s that around here in NY metro area. I had a leathered slate mantle top and hearth fabricated by the guys doing my kitchen stone counters and backslash. They had this great leathered slate smallish slab on sale for $9 /ft^2 and I asked for the remnants. They brought what looked like a table top along because the fireplace didn’t use a whole lot:
Fast forward to today and my tree guy cut down a 20″ branch from a sweet gum tree that looked like it was going to crush my garage. I used some of the logs to make a table. I made a support frame out of pressure treated lumber and lagged it to the stumps and going to make benches in a similar way:
OH WOW!! You find all the cool stuff in your house. Meanwhile I gut my kitchen and find leftover bricks up in a wall cavity that almost fell right on me because apparently they were too difficult to remove when the chimney got torn out?
Beautiful stuff you have there to work with, great results on the mantle. Plus seeing that you’re a bird whisperer is pretty cool too!
Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
Jerry, fantastic work! That mantle looks awesome too!
Can’t believe how cheap you got that surround man. Looks really sharp.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
Outstanding, what a transformation! You sure scored a great deal, thank you for sharing.
Looks great Jerry !!!!
Jerry that looks fantastic. Great work brother.
kruton wrote:
6 hours ago, kruton said:Can’t believe how cheap you got that surround man. Looks really sharp.
Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
Yeah I think the guy had it on Craigslist under “mantel” instead of “mantle” so he got little interest because normal searches wouldn’t show it ? It wasn’t the guys fault entirely because the original tag in the back from 1923 spelled it that way!!
I love the warning about the dry plaster. The stone guy used a laser temples ting system and got that hearth perfect to the contours of the firebox and I pulled the old cinder chute it if the original bottom and has him circa hole to drop it in to make it look like it’s always been there.
Ps- the table was more about cellebrating a victory over my sweet gum tree. ( anyone who knows them and their crazy spikey balls knows what Im talking about!) I still can’t believe the branch taken down was like 40 ft horizontal and 20″ in diameter.