Updating the Bathroom Mirror

Lately on Pinterest, I've been seeing a lot of tutorials for framing builder-grade mirrors in bathrooms.  This is something I had heard of years ago, but had never seen, and certainly had not attempted.

The mirror in our bathroom didn't bother me too much.  It was nice and big, and reflective (a quality I see as a "must" in a mirror).  However, there was a lot of water damage on the bottom of the mirror, which I had always seen as an eyesore.

Before

Before

A close-up of the water damage.  Ew.

So, with Pinterest and its access to tutorials, we decided to tackle this project.  Here are the links to the tutorials that helped me: http://www.thehouseofsmiths.com/2010/04/framed-mirror.html and http://impatientlyprayingforpatience.blogspot.com/2010/05/mirror-frame-tutorial.html

First we measured, cut, and put the frame together.  And when I say "we", I of course mean "Doug".

Measuring like a boss!

You know he's serious, because he is closing one eye.

  Then "we" applied some wood glue to hold it together.  Didn't read the blog very carefully, which said to use Liquid Nails, so it didn't hold very well.  Doug put some staples in the corners to strengthen it.

Glue time!

After that, Doug notched out the areas for the brackets that hold the mirror in place.  We had a bit of a scare, because the ones on top were peeking out of the top of the frame!  Luckily, Doug discovered that the mirror is completely glued to the wall, and the brackets were really unnecessary.  So he took them off.  Problem solved!

After the glue had dried, Doug used wood-filler for the seams and any imperfections in the wood.  Then we let it dry.

After this, we spray-painted the back black, and took it into the bathroom for a test run.  Yuck.  I liked the black frame in the tutorial, but it just looked wrong in our bathroom.  So we decided to go with white instead.  We just used some primer and paint that we already had.

Yuck.  We didn't like that either, because the countertop is more like an off-white, and so it just looked dirty.

So we took one final trip to Home Depot, and we found a grey that matched the towels in our bathroom.  And painted it ONE more time...

SUCCESS!  So we put the mirror up and traced inside of it with chapstick to see where the glue should go.  Then we took the Mirror Liquid Nails and put some gobs on the mirror.  Then we stuck it on...and prayed.  We taped it down with some painter's tape, and Doug rigged up some other ways of keeping it in place.

We used quarters as spacers, as we couldn't put it right up against the wall because the vanity is crooked.

Tape

Just to be safe.

The next day, we took the tape off, and voila!  I think it looks sooo good!  It really seems to finish the bathroom, and make it look more grown up!  If nothing else, it covers the nasty water stains.

The finished product!  And a handsome photographer!

Ta-da!

After, yo!

So that's it!  We feel so proud of our work, and ready to tackle the next project!  Well, actually we have tackled two more, so we'll blog about those soon too!