DIY Pottery Barn Mantel

This past year, I fell in love with this gorgeous pottery barn mantel:



It also happened to be REALLY expensive. My boyfriend’s parents and I happened to be feeling crafty and were up for the challenge to make our own. I’m so mad I didn’t take pictures of the process while we were doing it (it was pre-blog), but we also winged it. Regardless, I thought I would share pictures of the finished product and what materials we used so you can get started! A lot of it is personal preference, so I’m not sure how much step by step instructions would have helped anyways.

This picture of the final product hanging is also kind of lame, since I took it before I put picture frames, vases, and candles on it. Gah! If only I could go back in time. Oh well. Here is my hanging mantel. I chose not to make the finish vintagey like the pottery barn one, but if I made another one I would go that route.



We went to Home Depot and picked out my favorite crown molding. Then we got 5 boards for the sides, top, and bottom. You can really use anything here. We didn’t want to use real wood because it would make it really heavy, and you also don’t see it in the end. So we got the next sturdiest and light option we could find. We made a box-looking shape and then assembled to the box. We had to sand some, saw some, paint some, nail some, and wa-la! All done!








Sorry again that this isn’t super detailed, but I did some googling and found this blog post on making a similar mantel if you want to check it out!