How to Use Wooden Corbels

If you are wondering what a wooden corbel is, you may have seen them before without even realizing it. Wooden corbels can be hand-carved pieces of wood that simply go under a shelf in order to give it a touch of style, or they can be simple pieces of wood over your fireplace. You can use them to decorate a cabinet or even to support a mantle. You may have seen them near a fireplace supporting a shelf above the fireplace door.

Some Ways of Using Corbels

Wooden corbels come in a variety of sizes, styles, and wood types. You can use corbels to support shelves and other structures or even just as a decorative accent to your home. Many people attach them to their walls and use them as small tables or nightstands. Some of the different types of wood corbels you can get include alder wood, cherry wood, walnut, hard maple, and red oak.

Installing Your Wooden Corbels

As far as installing your corbels, you can either hard-mount them to the wall or hang them. On the back of most corbels, there should be a keyhole slot so that you can hang it on a wall using just a nail or screw. Your other option would be hard-mounting your Corbel either from the front or the back. Hard mounting includes any mount where the corbel is directly attached to the supporting surface with screws or bolts, and also wood glue if mounted on a wood surface. In order to remove the Corbel, you may need to reconstruct the cabinet work in order to get it off without damaging the wood.

Giving Your Home a New Look

If you are looking to use your wood corbels for your counter tops or shelves, you can easily transform your look of your home into a more elegant style. Some key ideas to really give your house that upgrade that it needs are by using corbels in your kitchen as supporting counters or islands. Corbels work beautifully with granite counter tops but can also work with any horizontal surface. If you have an empty wall area, wooden corbels would be perfect to have mounted on the wall. They can hold books, plants, photographs, trophies, or anything at a good eye-level.