Friday, March 17, 2017

Re-Purposed Bathroom Mirror

When I remodeled our master bath I knew I did not want to re-use the huge 6'X 3' wall mirror. We planned to use something a little more stylish and fun. but what do you do with a mirror that big. Can't cut it. Don't want to break it(too much bad luck!). I had seen large framed mirrors in homes were I went to write estimates, so I thought that might be one possibility. the thing is just so big and heavy and I was trying to think of an attractive way to frame it. I was trying to think of a way to use stock moldings to build up a frame when I ran across a large highly figured base molding at Lowes. I thought it would work. I thought I would need to use a backing of plywood to stiffen the thing, but the glass was heavy enough and I didn't want to make it so heavy I'd need a forklift to move it.
I decided to glue the mirror to a sheet of 1/2" plywood I had on hand because I thought 3/4 would be too heavy. I determined to add 1x3 pine boards to the back for added stiffness and ripped down some furring strips to go around the edge of the glass to support the molding. I glued and nailed everything.
I did not take a photo of the top with the furring strips and mirror attached. The finished photo looks pretty good. I think the mirror may be a little large in scale compared to the molding, but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. It took two of us to carry it into the bedroom from the garage. It still flexes a bit so I tried to be very careful not to allow it to flex while we carried it.