I grew up in a century old house that had several fireplaces. To me, that’s a standard room feature even if there is no actual fire in it. My husband might not agree about the fire part since he’s a Midwest guy who is partial to logs on the fire.

Last year, craftsmen at my job built faux fireplaces for Christmas decorations and I filed the idea away for later. I mentioned to Chris that I wanted one in our house.

A few weeks ago, he found a set of kitchen cabinets on Facebook marketplace for $15. He decided to turn those into my feature mantle. Since it was a cabinet, it had built-in storage on both sides which is a plus in a (somewhat) tiny house.

The key was adding a board and some ornamental wood pieces to the front. Chris used the air nail gun that he got from his Dad to add the additional ornamentation.

A few trips to Lowes/Home Depot and some elbow grease later, we painted and installed the piece. We used leftover wall paint-SW Extra White-to insure that the paint matched the trim. Chris, who loathes painting, even helped me finish painting it. It turned out well.

We added a giant piece of glass that we had taken out of the bathroom when we gutted it in the back. This helped make the room appear larger and reflect candlelight. Underneath the unit, we put down some faux metal sheets from Lowes.

Chris moved the middle shelf up in order to put the DVD player and TV hookups inside of it. Storage and looks-what more could a girl want?