Refresh Your Home With Antique Fireplace Mantels - Choosing an Antique Mantlepiece

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The hunt for the perfect antique mantel for your home can be surprisingly fun, especially if you're at all adventurous. While it's possible (and a bit expensive) to shop around online for the perfect restored period antique fireplace mantle, you'll find many gems in the rough sitting in dusty, crowded salvage shops and yards. And while restoring and fitting fireplaces is a job often best left to professionals, restoring antique fireplace mantels can be done by an avid do-it-yourself handyman with a good deal of skill. Even if you do opt for a professional restoration job (and chances are good that you should), you can save a great deal of money - and get a great deal of satisfaction - from discovering a hidden beauty in the back of a salvage yard, unnoticed. Just think of the stories you can tell!

If you're considering going on a hunt for antique fireplace mantels for your home, take the following tips and advice to help you in your search.

1. (For wooden antique mantels) Check local safety ordinances to find out the required distance from firebox to wooden mantel. This may rule out taller antique fireplace mantels with overmantels and elaborate shelves if your ceiling is low.

2. Consider the period of your home. If you're determined to be historically accurate in a restoration, it will limit your choices of available mantels. On the other hand, mixing architectural details from differing periods can create visually stunning rooms - if it's done with a careful eye for detail and design.

3. Study the wood working and detail in your home for repeated motifs. In fact, do yourself one better - take photographs of details that are especially striking and take them with you on your hunt. Many of the carving details found in crown mouldings and door lintels were repeated in antique fireplace mantels. It's not unheard of to find a wooden or stone mantelpiece with carvings that exactly match your existing wood working. After all, there were only so many architectural designers working during any one period.

4. Take into account the overall dimensions of your room. You want the fireplace mantel to be a focal point, not an overpowering attention grabber.

5. Measure the entire width of your existing fireplace, but don't be strictly bound by it. Especially if you are choosing to hang a free standing mantel on the wall, you can get by with a mantelpiece that's considerably wider than your hearth. In fact, you can incorporate it into a striking design statement.

6. Dress in scruffy clothing. Salvage yards can be dusty places. You might also want to take along a torch to make it easier to study details up close.
could be a sign of prosperity for you now.

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Corner Fireplace Mantels

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What are Corner fireplace Mantels?

Believe it or not but you can actually have a fireplace in a corner. It's true! Some homes have custom built fireplaces built in corners. Other people opt for an electric fireplace that can easily be integrated into a corner of your home without much work or renovation. Regardless of what type of corner fireplace you have, you ultimately need to get a corner fireplace mantel. Corner fireplace mantels are designed specifically for corner fireplaces (obviously). They are intended to help integrate a corner fireplace better into your space. Typically used with electric fireplaces, corner mantels have a deeper surface area. Since electric fireplaces don't have your typical smoke stack, the fireplace shelve is more of a top than a shelf. It covers the top of the fireplace and helps cement its presence in the room.

What if I have a normal fireplace that just happens to be in the corner?

If this is the case, your corner mantel is still a shelf. That's because the smoke stack does all the work of fitting into the corner. Such corner mantels might offer more options such as extended shelves to accommodate the two side walls. The bottom line is you need to know how much space you have to work with and how it will attach to the wall.

Shopping

If you're thinking about getting a mantelpiece, then here's what you need to do:

* Measure the space you have to work with. If it's an electric model and you have the entire top to work with, measure the front and each corner. If you have a traditional one with a smoke stack, measure the length of space you have across the fireplace.

* Establish what type you want. Do you want wood, stone, marble? The type of material you want will determine what options you really have.

* Shop! Start online and then hit the renovation shops. You'll find great deals online but don't be afraid to talk to people at the local home stores. They can help you determine what type you should get, but it doesn't mean you have to get it from their store. Shop around, ask questions, and then buy.

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