Good Afternoon, fellow bloggers. It's is a beautiful Friday afternoon here in Michigan. Still feels like summer and I hope it stays for a while. I usually don't blog on Friday but one of my daughters is out of town and didn't get a chance to blog about one of her creations, so I am trying to fill her spot this week, but just a little late. Anyways, I found this really cool mantle this Spring at the Springfield Flea market. I just fell in love with it and I was really hoping that when I cleaned it up it would look like I wanted it to. So here is my before picture:
As you can see it is a little rough. The brown paint bubbled all over it. Someone must have painted a latex paint over an oil base paint with not painting some Kilz paint first. I love the columns and the leaf or scroll design in the middle was really cool, too.
I had to scrape all the bubbled paint off and it just took time and a little muscle. I didn't really use any stripper because as you can see it had bubbles all over it. When I had scraped the whole piece and almost down the original wood, I slightly sanded the mantel and than painted a base coat with Kilz paint. I like to use this paint because if the wood has any oil stains or any stains the Kilz usually takes care of that and the imperfections usually don't bleed thru the finished paint job. I used an oops paint that had a very slight tinge of green in the white. One doesn't notice the green until evening when the shadows play off the mantel. I painted two coats of the white and than accentuated the details of the mantel with a dark brown paint. I wiped off the excess brown paint and got left with the paint in all the grooves and details.
When the brown paint was applied all of a sudden the details on the mantel started showing up. I love the details just under the top of the mantel.
Now my scroll in the middle of the mantle really shows up.
Even the columns of the mantel really show up and I didn't distress the actual columns, but I did the bottom and top of them.
This is what the mantel looks like when the detailing was done and before we put back in the camp.
I was really pleased with the end result and so was everyone else. They really didn't think it was going to turn out so nice.
We put it back in the camp and now we have to do the floor and finish the wall behind the mantel. We have to get a fireplace insert and than we will be done, but I guess Rome wasn't built in a day either. Baby steps. I had found this mantel and it took awhile and it only cost me $75.00 for something that is all wood.
I covered the hole with a curtain and the grandkids love playing in there. When the project is all done I will blog again about my wonderful mantle. What do you think, better or worse?
Until next time, Dianne........................
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