Wall continuation.. We have a DIY Mantel!

We are finding that the tongue and groove wall installation is going fairly quickly. Over 2-3 work days and about 12 hrs we have installed the pine boards up to 10' in our living area. Three walls!
Working around the electrical sockets and window frames are fairly simple.  The pins are working absolutely wonderful and the bowrench is worth its weight in gold! The kitchen wall where the cabinets will be installed has been left open. We will be installing plywood before the cabinets.

After searching and searching for a mantel we really liked and was in our price range, we opted to do a DIY mantel. We love it and think it turned out great! What do you think?  We used four 2" x 10" pine boards, glued and doweled together with 3/4" dowel.  Then the mantel was trimmed to a length of 5', sanded, textured and stained. The mantel was installed with the top at approximately 5'. The mantel was attached to the wall with 5/16 x 3 1/2" screws. Four screws were inserted from the back side of the wall. This mantel is sturdy and isn't going anywhere!

We picked up a 2" thick 36" cement square. This will be used under the cast iron wood burning stove that will sit in front of the mantel. I will be finding a way to stain that square.

We also installed wood trim around one window after testing a handful of stains. We were looking for something just slightly darker than the wall boards. We settled on Classic Oak. This is a stain and poly product that will only take one coat.  I like the slight overhang of the upper window trim. Nice touch!