New Fireplace Mantle

Slowly but surely we're putting our stamp on this house. The fireplace in our family room drove me crazy--I felt like it was made for a ski lodge--so I designed a very simple mantle to work with the existing gas fireplace and tile surround. We have a great carpenter who helps us with smaller projects around the house and here's the before and after. In the before, they'd already started pulling the mantle off. Also note that I moved the outlets from the front of the wall to the side (since we'll never put a tv up there) and painted the wall the same color as the rest of the room (accent wall had been a good idea in theory.)