Mirror Frame and a Shelf

The house I live in is separated into 4 apartments, one in the attic space, one on the main floor and two in the basement.  We are in the larger of the two basement apartments, and we also have access from our apartment directly into the boiler room, which we use for some extra storage. It has also produced some exciting items.  For instance when we didn't have a lot of extra money around when David was born at the end of November, it miraculously produced a Christmas tree we hadn't known about before.

Another exciting item was a large mirror.  It was dusty and had a bit of damage around the edges, but who finds a 4 foot wide mirror? We pulled it out and cleaned it off and mounted it on the wall the nasty plaid couch I tore up and rebuilt (here) used to sit.

I used a piece of plywood left over from the loft bed (here) to make a shelf. I just spray painted the piece and mounted it on three decorative shelf brackets Patrick and I got at Home Depot (which is quickly becoming a favorite store). We placed it about 2 inches below the edge of the mirror.

I am not much into the distressed look. I mean, a few pieces of antiqued furniture are fine but why would you want to intentionally make something look dirty? In any case, I didn't really like the chipped looking edges, so I decided to frame the mirror. Patrick and I looked at Home Depot for just the right trim (I was thinking garden stakes or something), when I realized we had a set of broken blinds at home (Patrick had replaced them on a job).

I cut a section of blind long enough to edge the entire bottom of the mirror and another for the top. I then cut two lengths that were the height of the mirror minus the width of the two blinds I had cut. This formed a rectangle that lined the mirror (without hanging off the edge).

I then cut additional pieces to fit on top of this rectangle, except the ends were cut at 45 degree angles to fit together like a picture frame. This meant I had two rectangles that lined the mirror while sitting on top, but the edges of the pieces did not line up.

I glued a long piece with the 45 degree cut on top of a long piece without the angle with Gorilla Glue and clamped it in place. I then repeated with the other two long pieces. I similarly glued the short sides together with the non-angled-edged board centered on the angled one. I then fit the boards together so the angled board on the short side overlapped the non-angled board of the long and glued and clamped the corners. It looked like a giant picture frame. I then filled in the holes where the string held the slats together with wall putty. After it all dried, I spray painted the frame.

A couple days later to ensure complete drying of the paint, Patrick helped me used Tacky glue to glue it to the top of the mirror.  We glued it with the mirror on the wall  because that way we could hide the mirror fasteners. Unfortunately, that meant we had to tape it really well while it dried. I chose Tacky glue because, being water soluble, it will wash off. The mirror is not technically ours (though it was made in 1969, so I suspect the original owner doesn't really care). I thought about hot glue but I was unsure if it would a) hold very well and b) manage to not crack the mirror.

I am quite pleased with the result.  Just putting up the mirror really helped distract from the radiator that is the prominent feature of that wall, and the frame and shelf just drove that home.

Coming next: How the couch I tore up is feeding my pillow obsession.