diy: mirror

so, i had this old mirror that used to hang in my old bedroom at my parents.  i originally didn't want to keep it and left it there to be sold in the rummage.  however, it didn't sell and so i brought it to the new house.  i decided i wanted to create a free standing mirror to mimic the one i have in my closet for the guestroom.

i have always hated staying at other people's homes or traveling to hotels where there is no full body mirror available.  how does one know if their outfit is awesome!?  and so, if we ever have guests, i wanted them to be able to see how pulled together they are.

so, first things first.  gather supplies!

matt and i bought 3 pieces of wood at the local hardware store.  i had some left over stain from a previous project and the beautiful mirror.

matt measured my free standing mirror in my closet to decide the length of our wood pieces.  he came up with 66 inches.

once the pieces were cut, he drilled some holes and used these brackets to adjoin the boards.  after putting 2 boards together, we decided that we didn't need the third board.  (which is fine for me..  i have a future project for that board!)

 and sanded the ends he had to cut.

 once all the handy man parts were complete, i helped him stain the wood.

 once we put the mirror on the stained wood, it looked so plain and boring.  my free standing mirror is mostly mirror with a 2 inch frame.  this small mirror and thick frame wasn't the look i wanted.

so we decided to use some of the leftover navy paint from the guest bathroom and guestroom to give it some character.  after much discussion, matt won with diagonal stripes.  and i won on how many navy stripes to do.  compromise.  by this time, it started to rain so we had to move the project in to the garage.  we used painters tape to tape off the sections we wanted to paint navy.  we used sponge brushes and lightly painted the navy so that the stain and wood would kind of show through.

we were both pleased with the way it came out.  (yay compromising!)  after everything completely dried, matt attached the mirror to the boards using mirror clips.  

and here is the final product:

we are going to prop this up in a corner of the guestroom.  i do like the look.  i like the stained wood and navy combo will match the furniture in there. however, the height of the mirror on the boards is perfect for me at 5'1"..  matt at 5'11" can't see anything above his shoulders.  so, if we could have done it again, i would have attached the mirror a little higher since he will be the one to use the mirror most often.  (his clothes are stored in the guestroom since the "master bedroom" we created out of the bonus room didn't come with a closet.)  in order for him to use it, he has to lean it against the wall at a harsh angle causing the mirror to come out too far in the room than i would like.  we'll have to play around with a compromise on that..  but for the most part, i think it turned out better than expected.

puppy tax:

just like her momma, obsessed with her reflection :)