Building Fireplace Mantels: Distinctive Projects for Any Style Home

Excellent for the beginner to the advanced woodworker. Covers framing considerations well, as well as atachment schemes and fasteners.

This is an outstanding book on a focused topic: "Distinctive [Fireplace] Projects for any Style Home." After discussing some basics of mantel making, he describes in detail from start to finish, step-by-step, including a materials list, suppliers, and tools needed for nine projects to build nine different style firelplace mantels: Simple Colonial, Georgian, Simple Federal, Arts and Crafts, Mackintosh, Victorian, Greene and Greene, Art Deco, and Contemporary. We are updating a fifty-year old home in Coral Gables, Florida. It presently has a very pedestrian fireplace mantel. I wanted a fireplace mantel with more style. My wife and I both loved the Art Deco mantel in the book and I plan to build it almost exactly as described. I should save a considerable amount of money on materials because the mantel is built basically from one sheet of mahogany plywood. The color photographs are also outstanding in clarity and detail.