Cedar Planked DIY Fireplace Screen

In the winter, I love sitting in front of the fireplace watching the flames dance while I warm up. But the rest of the year, I don’t really enjoy staring into the gaping black hole of our gas fireplace.

Problem solved with this DIY fireplace screen my husband and I built using tongue-and-groove cedar paneling in partnership with CedarSafe. (This is a sponsored post and it also contains affiliate links, but all opinions are my own. Read my full disclosure policy here.)

Though the screen is large enough to cover our 44X38-inch fireplace opening, it’s incredibly lightweight. It will be easy to move out of the way when we’re ready to light a fire.

And the aromatic cedar panels, which are designed to be used as closet liners, make our keeping room smell wonderful.

The DIY fireplace screen is the centerpiece of our fall hearth and mantel decor, which I posted about yesterday.

Today, I’m going to show you exactly how we made it.

For our fireplace screen, which measures 44.5 inches wide by 38 inches, we used 16 cedar tongue-and-groove planks, plus scraps to span the width.

Before we made any cuts, we laid out the planks on our sawhorses, fitting the tongues into the grooves.

The cedar planks come in 4-foot lengths. You’ll need to measure your own fireplaces opening to determine how long to cut each board.

For our fireplace screen, we cut 12 boards at 38 inches for the vertical panels.

I used my Ryobi circular saw to make the cuts.

I also cut four planks at 44.5 inches.

Once the boards were cut to length, we laid them out on the sawhorses again, aligning the top and bottom edges and making sure all the tongue-and-groove seams were secure.

Then, I applied wood glue to the back of two 44.5-inch planks, using them to from the top and bottom of the DIY fireplace screen. I made sure the tongues were pointing to the center of the screen, with the grooved edges aligned with the top and bottom.

While you’re waiting for the glue to dry, it’s a good idea to clamp the horizontal boards in place or weight them down using bricks or heavy books or rocks.

After the wood glue dried, we flipped the fireplace screen over and added horizontal pieces across the bottom, top and center for stability.

These were glued front side to back side and clamped while drying. For the top and bottom supports, I used two more 44.5-inch planks. For the center, I used scraps from our previous cuts to span the width of the screen.

As simple as that, the fireplace screen was done. We’re able to just prop it against the fireplace opening, but you could easily add feet or a stand.

If you build your own DIY fireplace screen using CedarSafe cedar planks, be sure not to use it in front of an open flame. Because we all know what happens when fire meets wood.

I had fun decorating the fireplace screen for fall, and I’m looking forward to using it for other seasonal decor.

And it’s going to come in handy for my blogging. I am thrilled that I no longer have to contend with ugly glares and reflections when I’m photographing our fireplace.

Do you see the tripod reflection in last year’s fall mantel decorating post?

Well, no more!

No glare here!

I’m also planning to use the DIY fireplace screen as a photography backdrop. Don’t you just love it when a project does double duty?