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Mantelpiece Work

Bob meets the restoration contractor, Richard Marks, in the library to go over the mantelpiece mockup.
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Mantelpiece Work

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Mantelpiece Work

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" So are coming along with. With this deficit pretty impressed well this is really just a mock up what we've tried to do is is mock up the whole chimney -- so everybody can look at it because you can draw but sometimes pictures just don't tell the story lies in the doing it realize we have. What twelve foot ceilings in this house well let's feeling so this whole chimney pieces twelve feet -- stats though it's a lot of wood. Let's run through the different elements that you aren't put together here well. The mantel we'll take up the first part the first level and in the upper part it would be over now which makes up the entire chimney breaths. I'm and you can see all these are won by twelve boards. And we're just facing them out. Trying to look at the grain and see how we want the grain to relate. From each board well I love the Cyprus grain as you see it here but you know that next board looks movement rough over there tonight so it's all packed up and will probably just take this women and put it may be with one that have. Deeper part color and then what do you do it do you just nail them in place now each board went to when it's. Put in its finish place will be numbered and taken down edges will be joined sort of smooth. -- Death and then that's enough for the over metal that is the metal itself honey come up with a design and you've got such beautiful antiques. Antique much -- mantle's in this house well the design is fairly easy because we haven't a proportionate system that's developed through a lot of these. Drawings like these pattern books at an Asher Benjamin. Pattern book from the eighteenth century right. We're we're not going to adorn this now with all of this -- in the garlands that you have in the front part of -- an -- to a similarity in the profile of classic antique mantelpiece do what you going mocked up here right in all -- of course. But this is this would act as the the capital. And that's being. Design from a column shaft so we have. The capital of the column the neck. Than the actual -- in the banks down here right these are all individual pieces you fit together right but it's it's fairly simple to put together once you have the proportions right all the pieces just go one on top of the other and then again you're cutting in -- during the moldings and the and the panels here to create. This. -- in the middle and I might -- it's -- else thought moldings but you had been cut Cyprus we had a run out of cypress that they would match the rest of the woodwork and house in the room. Wonderful let me see actually put some of them together just an understanding how easy -- off the back. Acts we just have simple blocking because it's not going to show is that that's the back of the -- the mantel and all -- and it Cyprus on the front. And we have these. Part of the cornice up top. Science. We have room to. Sitting assuming the the the owner likes it all you gotta take at all. Back apart. Right what this really is just a quick way and we've we've spent a whole lot of time and a we -- spent an hour or so mocking that's not right but then everybody gets a good idea of what it what it's gonna look like and we can make any changes. For all the final pieces -- cut. And that's as the last. Month's world I hope you liked it."

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