It sometimes amazes me what a simple switcharoo can do for a room…
This week’s “Thrift Store SCORE!” has a pretty big impact, without requiring much effort on our parts at all! Gotta love an easy project. (Well maybe every now and then…You know we love a good challenge!)
When I was taking room-by-room photos for our brand new house tour page I noticed something…I was in the half bath downstairs and, although we both know it needs some work given its ultra feminine and slightly country vibes (so not our style…), it occurred to me that we could start by simply getting rid of the mirror!
There’s nothing wrong with the mirror really – But the shape of it is a little “off” for our clean-lines home.
So off we went to Estate Specialist!
I’ll be honest…I wasn’t expecting to spend as much as we did. But when I started picking up mirrors, the price tags were in the $30’s. I adjusted my thinking and started the hunt for something in the $20’s instead to save at least a LITTLE moolah.
I finally found the PERFECT one – And of course, it didn’t have a price tag on it. But it had the right weight, the right clean lines and vintage-but-modern details we wanted, so I was ready to fork over the cash for it at the register.
It must have been our lucky day though because it was only $25! The perfect definition of a “Thrift Store SCORE!” – Our great find/deal really sunk in when we hopped on over to Lowe’s later that day for some paint supplies and happened to walk through the mirror aisle. Everything in the same size as our thrifted mirror was somewhere in the $50’s and $60’s. Gotta love that we paid half that price for a mirror with a lot more character then the brand new ones (and a great story to boot!).
So the first step in this oh-so-easy project was to unscrew the little caps that held the original mirror to the wall.
I didn’t take many good pictures of this project for some reason, but here’s an online image of the doodads I’m referring to:
So anyways, I simply unscrewed three of the four plastic anchors from the wall and gently eased the mirror off the last anchor before removing that one too. All gone!
Here are the two mirrors sitting on the floor of the bathroom – The old on the left and the NEW thrifted one on the right! Isn’t she a beaut?? 🙂 And it’s REALLY heavy…Makes me feel like it’s well-made for some reason.
I’m sure you can guess what comes next, given that all I needed to do was hang the new one like any other wall art…But I’ll be thorough and tell you anyway:
- I held the new mirror up to the wall over the sink with my finger holding the mounting wire taut behind it.
- When the mirror was where I wanted it, I simply let the finger that was holding the wire tight flick out until it was touching the wall – This is my scientific way of marking where the nail should go.
- I called for John to come take the mirror for me since I was carefully staying still, keeping my finger where the nail should go (did I mention that that mirror is a heavy sucker?!)
- And then grabbed a nail, put it just below where my finger was still marking the spot and hammered it into place!
- Mirror went up on the wall – Et voila!
In our opinion, it adds character and warmth to the bathroom – Something it was lacking before. I find that frameless mirrors, while very subtle and appear to float, don’t add much to a room’s personality. I love the new mirror’s straight-edged shape and the detailing in the wooden frame itself.
Before:
And after!:
The bathroom is far from done, although this is a good step in the right direction. The plan is to paint the room a pale grey and then add mustardy yellow, white and darker grey accents. Sort of in this direction:
Hope we can find most of the new additions in a second-hand shop!
And yes, I’m contemplating painting the new frame white…I know it seems like murder to cover up the beautiful dark wood, but I think the white will REALLY bring out the details in the frame and will make it pop against the grey walls. Also brings it a little more into the modern age. What do you guys think?
Happy thrifting!
(Photo credit for plastic wall mount doodads: here; all images for Inspiration Board came from a Google image search)
