Fireplace Beam Mantle Makeover

A makeover of the beam above our fireplace!

I’ve always disliked the beam above our fireplace.

It was a weird orange/brown color & it has this humongous hole in the center of it.  It’s also super wavy on the top so things do not sit flat.

I wanted a cool beam & this totally wasn’t it!

When we were renovating our home, I had a couple ideas for the beam.  One was to remove it completely & put something different there.  Another idea was to put boards around the existing beam to essentially build a new mantle.

Of course, renovating the entire house took precedence & the fireplace beam was placed to the bottom of the list & that’s where it stayed.

To be honest, I had pretty much forgotten about my hopes for the fireplace beam.  We moved in & then life took over.  DVD players & game systems were placed on the mantle.  The TV was placed above it, making it a focal point.  I still disliked the beam, but I had other things going on, so it kept getting pushed to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list.

Here’s what the beam looked like shortly after we moved in:



It wasn’t so bad, but it still bothered me sometimes.

Finally, last week, I got around to doing something about the fireplace beam.  As with most things in my life, it just kind of randomly started.  I was actually over by the fireplace to make an Instagram story about my ideas for the little corner over there.  I was clearing the beam off a little when I started actually looking at it.

I wondered if the beam could be just sanded down to the bare wood.  I grabbed a sanding sponge & decided to test if the beam actually would respond to sanding.  I stated off with a small area on the side & got so excited when bare wood started showing!  It was then a project was born!

Now that I knew the beam could be sanded down, I got a power sander & got to work!  Because the beam is so uneven, the power sander couldn’t get in all the cracks.  I had to sand a little bit & then sand the rest off by hand.  It took forever, but really not as long as I thought it would.  I also didn’t really sand the top or the bottom, so that saved a ton of time!

As far as sealing goes, I think I’m going to leave it alone right now.  I did receive a ton of great ideas via Instagram though, so when I’m ready to seal the beam, I’ll probably use one of them!

I absolutely love the bare wood look on this beam!  It’s not such an eye sore to me anymore!