My Mirror Got a Facelift

Just wanted to share an update on the bathroom renovations.  The bathroom is officially finished -- WAHOO!  YAAAYYY!  [Insert angels signing in jubilation here].  Final pics will be forthcoming just as soon as I get them uploaded.

In the meantime, I just wanted to post about a  project that was critical in the whole renovation process.  This baby made such a huge impact on the space.

I'm talking about my mirror.  This mirror has been around as long as I can remember.  It belonged to my great-grandfather and was passed down to my mom, who stored it in the attic for years and years and years.  It was kind of a dirty gold, red, blue, green multi-colored baroque looking thing with years and years of grime all over it.  (I wish I had a photo of it then, but I usually lack foresight in these kinds of projects and always forget to take 'before' photos.) I cleaned it up some, but it always looked a little too gothic for my taste.  So, I painted it gloss black and hung it in my bedroom for a long time.

Here's a picture of it in our bedroom at our old rental house:

When we moved to our new house, there just wasn't any good place to hang this gal and so she sat leaning up against the wall in the bedroom for the longest time, collecting dust.  When I got the bright idea to tackle our phase 1 bathroom renovation, she seemed like a perfect choice for a statement mirror in the bathroom.  [Yes, the mirror is a 'she'.  She's too pretty to be a boy.]

Since I wanted the bathroom to be bright and airy, I decided to paint the frame white.  Daniel also pointed out that since it was going to get a facelift, the actual mirror should probably be replaced.  The silver on the back had come away in several places, making it pretty distracting when trying to see your reflection.  Luckily, we have a glass shop about a mile up the road from our house and they were able to cut a new mirror to size for around $35.

We had to take the old mirror out of the frame so that they could size the new one, which entailed taking off the old cardboard backing and pulling out all the nails that were holding the mirror in place. (Please excuse my messy, unmade bed / work table.)

Here's a pic where you can kinda see how badly the silvering was coming off:

And EVERYONE needs one of these in their house: 

Since this hefty lady weighed in at about 60+ pounds, it had broken it's wire hanger 2 or 3 times at our last house and fallen to the floor.  Miraculously, it hadn't broken but was cracked in a few places.  Cracks are nearly invisible when painted with black paint, but white shows every little flaw, so we had to do some spackling on the bigger cracks.  Once that was dry, I spray-painted her with Rustoleum any-angle spray.  It took about 2 full cans to cover it completely.  

And..... drumroll please.... here she is, in all her radiant glory:

Isn't she a beaut?!?  She made such a huge difference in the bathroom!  I love her and tell her she's pretty every day.  No, that's not weird at all. ;o)

Note: If you want to see where we started and our progress up to this point, click here and here.  If you want to see what we've done since, click here and here.