DIY Framed Bathroom Mirror

I am slowly trying to redo our guest bath with easy, inexpensive DIY upgrades. The guest bath is VERY small so it's a good place to try out projects on a small scale before I start to tackle our master bath (shhhh don't tell hubby I plan on tackling the master bath next.) All of our mirrors are the basic builder slap some glass up mirrors and definitely leave much to be desired.

As you can see, the whole bathroom is builder basic, but one project at a time.

What you will need:

Baseboard trim - amount to fit perimeter of the mirror

Liquid nails

Sharp knife

Caulk

Wet rag

Miter saw

Cost= $20

To frame this mirror, I purchased a 12' piece of baseboards from Lowes. I thought this would be an easy "run in and grab it" purchase but man was I wrong! There are so many options! I went with a thicker trim that is made of pressed board and was already painted white. I originally wanted real wood but the nice Lowes lady talked me out of it. Because I don't have any space between the mirror and the wall in the corner, I couldn't screw the boards into the wall. Real wood would have been to heavy for liquid nails. You could also do this project with the super light boards made from foam and use a silicone if you wanted something a little more temporary, but I didn't like the look of the foam boards, plus hey, this mirror really couldn't get much worse.

I had the nice lady cut the board in half for me so it would fit in my car. My mirror measured 42" tall and 27" wide. From each 6' board I was able to get one vertical piece and one horizontal piece.

My father-in-law was nice enough to cut my trim for me with his miter saw. This is a very important step because the angles need to be exactly 45 degrees or your mirror won't line up.

A few tips we picked up along the way:

• Always measure on the thick side of the board. This will be your outside perimeter of the mirror and will need to match up with the with of your glass.
• Always cut the boards face up. We didn't figure this out until the end but cutting them face down instead of moving the saw blade back and forth will cause the boards to be a little uneven. This is due to the rounded edges on the moulding. If you are using a flat piece of trim instead of the decorative type like I used, this shouldn't make a difference

Once your boards are all cut, lay them out to make sure they fit together. Otis thought they looked pretty good.

Once you're pretty confident that your corners match up, it's time to start gluing them to the glass. If your mirror is held up by brackets, you will need to use a sharp knife to whittle away a small spot for your brackets to fit. If you skip this step then your boards won't sit flush with your glass and your corners won't line up correctly. I forgot to take a picture of this step but basically I held the board up to the mirror, marked where the brackets were with a pencil, and whittled away at the backside until the wood sat flat on the glass. 

Now you are ready to glue the trim to the mirror. I started with the bottom board, then the two sides, and finally the top board. Squeeze a moderate amount of liquid nails on the back, making sure not to get too close to the edge where the mirror will be. I got a little close in a few places and you can see it in the reflection if you look real hard.

Liquid nails sets pretty quickly so make sure all your boards are lined up correctly and then tape them in place to secure them until the glue dries completely. I used packing tape and it worked just fine.

Once the glue is dried, peel off the tape and you're almost done!

The last thing you want to do is take some paintable caulk and go over the seams on the corners. Smooth it in any cracks with your finger and then wipe off the excess with a damp rag. This will hide any imperfections with your boards lining up.



Once the caulk dries, you can paint your frame any color you want. I decided to leave mine white to match the rest of the trim in the room.

I love the way this project turned out. You could easily do this project in an afternoon, if you're not painting the boards you could even do it in less than an hour.

This is definitely an upgrade from the plain sheet mirror. I can't wait to get some more work done in this bathroom!

~Amanda