Faux fireplace mantel, all ready for stockings and more

I started this project because I’ve always wanted a mantle for hanging Christmas stockings. Et voilà! Here it is — the IKEA faux fireplace mantel. Finished and ready for Halloween.

I wanted something simple and easy to put together without too much carpentry skills required. So this is something that requires a very limited number of power tools and 3 cuts with a circular saw.

The inspiration came from Pinterest where I have seen a similar faux fireplace with storage. The only difference was that the upper part wasn’t a drawer, but a door.

IKEA items used:

METOD wall cabinet frame white (30x37x80cm) x 2
VEDDINGE door white (30x80cm) x 2 (this is the plain door front that I have used)
UTRUSTA shelf white (30x37cm) – 2 sets (One package comes with 2 shelves)
UTRUSTA hinge with built-in damper for kitchen 110 ° – 2 sets (this package comes with 2 hinges)
METOD wall cabinet frame, white (80x37x80cm) x 1 (for the middle part)
MAXIMERA drawer, medium, white (80x37cm) x 1
VEDDINGE drawer front white, (80x20cm) x 1(same model as the door fronts)
UTRUSTA Push opener x 1 (instead of handles)
LINNMON Table top, white (150x75cm) x 3 (one for the bottom and 2 for the top)

Other materials and tools:

8m of Styrofoam wall molding that has a high density (so it behaves like wood)
1 roll of wallpaper (wash brick patterned wallpaper)

Faux fireplace mantel IKEA hack

It all started with planning on paper and using the IKEA kitchen planning tool.

IKEA’s METOD kitchen range is so customizable and you can find all the dimensions and exact parts you need in the IKEA kitchen planner.

So, I needed cabinets that were 37 cm in depth.

Then on the sides, 30cm wide cabinets with shelves and in the middle a 80cm wide cabinet with drawers.

You can remove from the plan the drawers you don’t need (in my case the bottom two drawers were deleted so that the shopping cart is accurate).

To remove the drawers you go to the right side menu to “Customize” and then you have the drawers in the order they are shown in the plan top down. Just remove the fronts and also the drawer system as well.

During the planning process I realized that I don’t need the base and the legs of the base kitchen cabinets. So I switched from base cabinets to wall cabinets (37cm depth and 80cm height).

For the middle one I selected the one with doors and then Customized it and removed the doors and the shelves.

Plenty of options to customize your faux fireplace mantel

If you don’t want to do the door molding yourself you can choose doors that already have a molding design to them. Plenty of options to choose from. Also if you want to go on black that is possible as IKEA has the METOD frames on wood like black.

Then in the planning tool you get the list of items that you need. You just need to select from the list the items that you need (as in this planning exercise more items are listed than the needed ones). You can create your own shopping cart or favorites list by copying the article code from the list in the planning tool.

I placed the order at IKEA and collected it from the store. (For pandemic times click and collect seemed the safest option for me).

Start assembling

Then I started assembling the furniture.

For phase two I needed the circular saw to do the clean cut on the table tops. Here I had some help from my partner.

He helped reduce the depth of the LINNMON table tops from 75cm to 42cm. So the bottom and the top goes over the cabinets 5cm in the front and sides (no need for the back).

Wallpapering the back

After I had the base and the top done the wallpaper was next. For the base and inside the fireplace / middle cabinet, I used a white wash brick patterned wallpaper. This goes perfect with my entire living room design. (I have light grey walls and most of the furniture is white).

Phase three was applying the molding.

I chose to apply the molding myself to create more of a fireplace look. I purchased Styrofoam wall molding that has a high density (so it behaves like wood). For cutting the molding I used a hand saw and a device that helps you to keep the cutting angles precise.

Finished and ready for Halloween.