I’ve been anxious to add a trio of mirrors on the giant blank wall in my dining room. I wanted something low cost, but pretty. Walmart always has mirrors for about $5, so I started with a few of those.

I began by taking off the white plastic frame that came with it. To do this, I used a utility knife to cut along the edges so I could easily remove the paper that covered the entire back of the mirror. No need to get too crazy here, I basically just wanted to get a better view of the glue.

Next, I (and my very helpful husband) used the utility knife to carefully cut along the edges where the glue met the mirror.

There are staples holding the corners together, and those can be easily removed with a pair of pliers. We found that you don’t necessarily have to remove all of the staples. We just removed them from one side. With one edge free, carefully pull the plastic frame from the mirror. The remaining edges are much easier to remove after you’ve gained some leverage from pulling apart the first side.

After you’ve removed all of the old frame, it’s time to dress up your mirror.

For our project, we used:

3 mirrors

6 pieces of 1x4x6 lumber

a tube of Liquid Nails

Stain (I used Minwax special walnut)

2″ flat L-brackets

spray paint (I used Rustoleum’s oil rubbed bronze)

 

Once the mirrors were ready, I then spray painted the brackets and screws so they weren’t shiny silver anymore.

I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted to make 45 degree cuts on the corners of the wood, or have them just butt up to each other. I always get a more rustic/primitive feeling when I look at wood that is just butted up to one another, so that’s what I chose.

Because of the size of my mirrors, I cut the long sides at 51 inches, and the shorter ends at 10 inches. This gave me enough space to be able to glue the mirror directly to the wood frame after it was assembled.

After the lumber was cut, I purposely didn’t sand or do any kind of prep-work. I picked a few pieces that had damage to add character to the face of the frame. You could use a hammer, a nail, a chisel or some other type of tool to create your own interesting marks.

I then used a rag to rub stain the top and edges of my lumber. I only applied one coat, and used varying amounts of pressure and stain to get lighter and darker areas in each piece. I only needed to let them dry for about 10 minutes.

Next, I organized and assembled the pieces to make the frame. I placed the L-brackets in the corners where I wanted them and screwed them on so all of the boards were tight.

After the face of the frame was done, I flipped the whole thing over and added the liquid nails to the back.

Then I placed the mirror on top of the liquid nails, face down. After the mirror was attached to the back of the wood frame, I wiped off any excess liquid nails that got squeezed out and placed them on the floor. I put something heavy on top of them to make sure there was pressure holding them together while the liquid nails set.

I left them alone for about 10 hours, and they were ready to hang.

 

Since I didn’t use any kind of backer on these (it’s basically a wooden frame glued to a plain mirror) I decided to use large command hooks to hang them on the wall. I put three on each side, attached directly to the mirror, and they have stayed on the wall ever since.

Viola!