{Here we go...again!}

In the famous words of Salt 'n Pepa, "Here we go, here we go...here we go again!  Girls what's my weakness?"  Next lyric would be "Men," but let's face it, when you're married to guy like Justin (and the man part is taken care of), my weakness is "HOME IMPROVEMENT". 

We just built this house, and we have officially lived in it for about three months and we haven't touched a thing!  Let me just add too, that doing NOTHING was really difficult for us...and I am itching to get at it again!  (Okay,  now that I think about it, we did change the dining room light.)

So, here we are and we're at it again.  It's HAMMER time! (Okay, I promise, no more cheesy 80's music references.) We are going to rebuild our builder basic mantle.

The most nerve wracking thing is that we are worried about messing up this NEW house!  It's something that we need to get over, we know it...but it's hard.  I mean it is a great house and most people would probably just keep it  the way it is, but honestly, that's not how we roll.  We need more charm.

So, here is what the mantle looked like when we were building the house and up until now!  We thought it was okay...we just wanted something a little more substantial.

Here's "The Kid" cheesin' it up for everyone!

And here are the plans...(excuse my rough sketch, but that's how we visualize things before we build).

My inspiration came from The Lettered Cottage post about her own fireplace makeover "Our $82 Fireplace Makeover - Revisited".  Gorg, right?  Well, ours didn't cost a little as $82, we actually spent about $175 for our wood, because we didn't use luan, we used solid pine select lumber.

Check her out...she is AMAZING!