A Little Less Blah

This is a project that I've been talking about doing for a LONG time, but we just recently got around to. I've always thought that our builder grade mirrors looked a little boring and after seeing tons of blog posts lately about how to frame them, we decided to give it a try!  The process is pretty straight forward, but I will say, it wasn't as simple as I anticipated.

Here are the basic instructions...

Step 1: Pick a trim style that you like. We picked something fairly simple for our first attempt. While I'm happy with the way it turned out, I think we'll pick something with a little more bulk and detail when we do our master bath mirrors.

Step 2: Measure the dimensions of your mirror and using a miter box, cut the trim to size.

Step 3: Paint the trim your desired color...we went with white because it's so neutral.

Step 4: Glue each trim piece to the mirror. This proved to be the tricky part. Most blog posts I read about how to do this said to either use hot glue or liquid nails...we found that hot glue doesn't adhere permanently and that liquid nails requires you to hold it for an extended period of time...like 15 minutes each side. Since our mirror was already on the wall we couldn't use the clamp method that was recommended. SOLUTION: Gorilla Glue with a few dots of hot glue. The hot glue just holds the trim on temporarily while the Gorilla Glue can expand and do it's stuff.

Step 5: Fill in any gaps on the corners with wood filler and touch up the paint!

Here's the finished product...

I'm sure our next 2 mirrors will go up much easier now that we've worked out the kinks.  All in all, it's an easy and cheap way to dress up a boring mirror.