Customer Reviews

Fireplace and Mantel Ideas: Over 100 Classic Fireplace Mantel Designs

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the best book you will find if you are looking for inspiration - not instructions on how to build a fireplace!! This book provides a huge array of mantel ideas and gives the reader fabulous ideas. In fact this would be an excellent resource for anyone building a home or for a designer with clients who just don't know what style of mantle or fireplace they are looking for. A gem in my opinion I give it a five star rating!

I purchased this book thinking it might help me build a mantel shelf and found it to be worthless. This book is an lengthy advertisement to try to sell mantels. I don't recommend it as one can purchase a magazine to view pretty pictures of mantels.

I'm an ole timey (senior citizen) fireplace builder for 51 years. This book was fun for me and is choice for learning secrets about a useful fireplace. Hey author, I like your classy and easy mantels and build some but I can't find any book anywhere that has a bunch of more complicated mantel plans that I can sharpen my beever teeth on. Help me anyone!! Good job on this book but please write a new one quick for us ole timey builders. I need pricey mantel ideas to put in my toolbox.

Me and my husband have bilt and remodeled since 1939. That's lots of work. I bought him this book which he says is the best. He likes it for the details about new fireplace types such as the gasless. He also got good ideas on easy mantels. Buy it for your own good.

I usually don't write book reviews but felt I should since I really disagee with the reviewers who gave this book one star. This book doesn't have any advertisements. It contains over 20 original mantel designs that my wife and I felt we could build from common materials. I am not an experienced craftsman, but this book helped me gain the confidence I needed to begin the project. We are quite pleased with the results. I built the "Oak Manor" mantel which was simple to build and was completed in a week of my spare time. Our friends can't believe how good it looks and I have loaned this book several times. The next fireplace I build I would like to be a ventless since this book answered all my technical questions and gave me several ideas on where and how to install various types of fieplaces. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about fireplaces and would like to build their own mantel.

My wife and I recently bought a new house and wanted to install a fireplace. We knew little about fireplace technology or what manufacturers offered. I had no idea until I read this book that there were so many options. The book describes in detail not only the many options but how they work and whether they're appropriate for your particular fireplace. The book also gave us great inspiration with choosing a mantel design. The book contains several mantel designs and how to build each one. The beautiful photos and construction illustrations were very helpful when we built ours. The big fireplace suppliers are also noted in the book with lots of helpful photos of their offerings. For myself, the wealth of knowledge I gained about fireplaces was priceless and very easy to read! I would recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about adding a fireplace to your home or redesigning an existing one.

My wife and I recently bought a new house and wanted to install a fireplace. We knew little about fireplace technology or what manufacturers offered. I had no idea until I read this book that there were so many options. The book describes in detail not only the many options but how they work and whether they're appropriate for your particular fireplace. The book also gave us great inspiration with choosing a mantel design. The book contains several mantel designs and how to build each one. The beautiful photos and construction illustrations were very helpful when we built ours. The big fireplace suppliers are also noted in the book with lots of helpful photos of their offerings. For myself, the wealth of knowledge I gained about fireplaces was priceless and very easy to read! I would recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about adding a fireplace to your home or redesigning an existing one.

This publication is more like an ad than a book. Submissions are actually from manufacturers. There are some nice pictures, but very little original information. I cannot recommend this book for someone looking to build a mantel.

Unlike a few others who have reviewed this book, I found this book to be extremely helpful and useful to me. I imagine that the critics of this book are serious wood craftsmen who are looking for books on carving mantels. This book is not that. It is for others like myself who want to make home improvements and are handy with tools. The author shows ways to add a hand carved look to a mantel without having to carve it yourself. I am neither an artist or master crafstman. The book showed me several mantels that were elegant in design but simple to construct. I built a contemporary mantel for my new home which was very inexpensive to construct and the materials were readily available. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys doing their own home improvements!

If you are building your own home this book MIGHT be worthwhile. The mantel designs are mediocre at best.
If you are doing a remodel and looking for design ideas, don't waste your money or time looking at this book. I have found the same photos browsing through the internet or picking up brochures at a home center. There is absolutely NO effort on the part of the author to find interesting or unique fireplace designs. I was really hoping to find more ideas and was seriously disapointed within the first five pages.