Before & After

I realized that I never did a follow up from this post. A few months ago I finally bought a mantel from craigslist. I had been looking for close to 6 months and finally found one that would have a pretty good fit, be easy to mount and not too expensive. Those were the three main things that were holding me up. Our box and surround are a weird size so hardly any of the mantels I found would work. The mantels that would work were mainly all super heavy concrete which we had no clue how to move let alone mount. Anyway my dad and I drove my round prego self to the middle of nowhere to pick it up. We tried haggling on the price a little but the guy wouldn't budge, I got it for $200, which is not a bad deal considering it is carved wood.

Before:


After:


Now the issue is that the surround is not as big as the mantel so you can see some brick. For now I may just paint the brick that it is still exposed black, but we want something more attractive. What I would like to do is have a hammered copper surround but I am not sure where to start on that search. There is also tile or just getting a bigger piece like the one that's there. Any advice from the peanut gallery?