Mirror Mirror On The Wall: Building A DIY Mirror Frame

Since I believe that all manner of ailments can be cured with a little sawdust, I decided building a couple of simple mirror frames was just what thecrazy woman with all the toolsdoctor ordered.

Here's what I did:

I started with some 1×2 pine stock and a couple of 24×36 polished-edged mirrors from Lowe's. the materials for both mirrors cost about $50 total.

The mirrors were 1/4? thick, and I decided on a half-inch overlap for the frame, which means each piece of the frame needed a 1/4 x 1/2? notch put in them. This is a perfect job for the router.

I'm just going to go ahead and admit (again) that the full sized router is not my favorite tool to use. It's one of the few tools I own that doesn't fit well in my hands and I never feel quite in control of it, which is 1.) how to go from joking about losing a finger to actually losing a finger, and 2.) why I own a palm router (that I do love) and use the big one exclusively in the router table.

However, you can't argue with the results. Since I chose not to miter the corners but to join them square to echo the look of the window trim, only the long sides were run all the way through the table. The notches on the short sides needed to start and stop before the end of the wood.

Now, one screw though the end of a square joint isn't very stable, but my plan was always to glue the mirror directly to the frame. The alternative would have been to either add a little wood glue to each joint or clamp the frame together and shoot a couple of finish nails through each corner.

Here's what it looks like from the front...

The back...

 

And (because I thought this would be the appropriate time to make sure it fit the actual mirror) here's what it looks like "put together".

That's basically all there is to building the frame.

I first put two coats of Early American stain on both frames (to match the other wood trim in the room).

 

Then I decided I might like them better dark like the base of the cabinets, so I finished them out with a coat of Ebony stain and a final coat of satin poly. The mirror was attached with a bead of CAULK.

 

So, first, yay for having a couple of big mirrors for under $30 apiece! However, everything was not smooth-sailing for this project. Here are a couple of things I could have done better:

1. Um, actually measure the space before buying the materials and building the frames. Planning? Anyone ever heard of that? I've been operating with a few nails short of a full gun for the last couple of weeks, and realized when I got about here in the process...

That there is no way there will be enough room for this mirror given the backslash I had planned and the height of the light fixtures. So that was awesome.

I kind of like the mirror just leaning against the wall so I might leave them that way, or skip the backsplash, or some other variation of craziness.

2. Did you know mirrors reflect things? Like, say, the un-stained back of the frame.

It's a crappy picture, but you can kind of see what the problem is. I didn't think to stain the back side of the frame that touches the mirror. Luckily I only glued one mirror in and it's not that prominent unless you're looking for it. But if you're wondering where the second mirror is, the stain on the inside of the notch is drying as we speak.

So, all in all it could have gone better and it could have gone worse, but for $50 and an afternoon I wouldn't have done it any other way. And now the cat doesn't think I'm winking at him all the time.