as you saw in our first video we were setting down that hearth in order to be able to have something to dry mount our mantel on and I say dry mind her mantle because the first and most important thing to do is to put everything up first dry to make sure it's plumb and level and make the adjustments knowing what you're going to have to do when you actually go and use real mortar and make the final attachment now as you can see where we're checking out these legs and we're going to check to make sure that everything is level and with any mantel like this even if it's a new one basically or an old one we like to make a template of the feet because those feet and where they rest on the hearth are going to be very important we're gonna end up drilling two holes and defeat them and then we're gonna drill two holes in the half and each of those holes are gonna receive a dowel which will run up through the hole that we are now drilling in the leg and this means that the leg when we actually install it is going to be absolutely rock-solid at the bottom we don't want that leg kicking out at all as you can see here we are shimming it and leveling it upside down don't necessarily need to do it upside down but I like to do it that way in order to make sure that I can tell exactly where those feet are going to sit on the hearth and exactly where the mantel is going to sit on the wall because that gapping is critical to make sure we get it centered on the firebox so we measure between the legs at the bottom at the top and we level and then we go back to the half with the templates that we made of the food of each foot of burn that cast iron mantle and we mark that template so we know where each leg is going to sit on the half and we square it off the back wall and then we shall be drilling the holes for those two dowels that I mentioned now you know whether whether this is an antique marble mantel or stone mantel or or a new stone mantel the the rules still pretty well apply like this so you can see now where we're setting this leg the left-hand leg and we're gonna shimmy it into position and and we start starting to add shims at the bottom which you'll see later on can be there but we're adding it to level that leg and where you're looking at a leg like this which is from a mantelpiece that architectural accents do that's called a lude Bergerac which is basically afton or original the imperfections are very desirable because the whole point about this is we try to make Mantle's that are absolutely true to the period and look as if they've basically been there for a long time and we tend to take these Mantle's and make them and then we put them out in the weather for a few months they age down we wash them off and as you can see this is one that has just gone through that same process that we're installing anyway back to where we are we're vacuuming out the the holes that we've drilled for the dowels and you can see these horseshoes Shems and you can see that hole in the center which is going to receive that Dow which is a stainless steel threaded out and we like to use quarter to half inch to panning on the weight of the legs this is in fact a half inch one and we're going to slide it over there very carefully lean it back against the wall and then see if we if we've got a really good level which we actually did in this particular instance we didn't have to shim anymore we make our marks we know our measurements between legs we can use brackets so in some case some cases we use a copper earth wire we drill a hole in the top of the leg and we make the attachment with these brackets and those brackets are going to attach back into the wall now this particular wall is is studded with with with basic two by fours and we're going back into that wood you could do exactly the same each block will interpret we put our shims we like we like a quarter of an inch of of mortar in our joints and now we're doing the heavy lifting as you can see and we're gonna take that mantel and we are going to put it on this little genie lift just to make it easier on our backs we're gonna roll it up and this is all dry remember and then Jose is gonna pop it on and as you can see it's on so what we now do is we'll see where we're going we make the marks on the wall again this is all dry we check the level the level is perfect if it had to be shimmed up on one side or the other we can we can do that at this point but in this case it wasn't necessary so we make the mark in the mantle again on the underside where the top of the leg same same idea as the bottom of the leg into the half we're going to put another dowel to make sure that that apron does not move and then as soon as we've drilled we vacuumed out the hole to make sure that dust is out and then we're going to eventually turn this mantle the right side up and pop it back having done that it's time to mix up the solution that's going to work for this man and it's this exactly the same idea we're going to put mortar into the center portion of each joint leaving about a quarter to half an inch all the way around so we're going to do this in our next thrilling install which would be part three