Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

So for the longest time we’ve wanted to dress up our bathroom mirrors and/or get new ones. We replaced the one in the downstairs hallway bathroom seen here. At some point, I’d like to do a major bathroom renovation for our master bathroom so I haven’t worried about that one too much yet. But our other full bathroom upstairs is on the verge of getting a lot more frequent use…..so a trip to our local Habitat for Humanity, Restore, inspired me to take the first step.

While digging through lots of common household goods, I came across several 3” baseboards from what appeared to be a pretty old Richmond home. I needed two boards that totaled at least 77”. Total cost was $4. If you were to get a custom mirror frame from a website like www.mirrormate.com, you’d most likely spend a minimum of $100.

I brought the boards home and ran them through my planner to remove a coat of stain but also to smooth out the backside. Most baseboards that I’ve seen have this weird little channel grooved out of them and I wanted them completely flat so that I can adhere the wood straight to the mirror with the maximum amount of surface area.

Once planed, I made some 45 degree miter cuts. I kept the width to the exact width of my mirror, 36”, but I made the length 1.5” longer than the length of the mirror so that I’ll be able to remove the mirror clips and instead put two screws through my frame and into the wall in order to secure the mirror to the wall. I used my biscuit cutter, some biscuits, some wood glue, and a bunch of clamps to join all four corners together. Once it was all in one piece, I took some wood putty and filled in the nail holes and as an extra precaution placed some on the corner joints. After it dried, I used my new orbital sander (which broke…grrrr!) to sand it all down smooth. I thought for sure that I took pictures during the process but there’s nothing in iPhoto….boo.

Here’s some of the progress pics….The next step that we are thinking about before installing is to sand down the bathroom vanity cabinet and stain both the mirror frame and the cabinet to match. I have some leftover Dark Walnut from the dining room table, and that’s what I’m leaning towards….any thoughts? Should we stain it all or should we paint it all? Another option is to just simply paint the frame either black or white and leave the cabinet alone???