How I saved a thrift store mirror...from myself...

This is the story of me saving a mirror.  Albeit, I saved the damn thing from myself and the terrible things I was doing to it in an effort to make it less ugly.  So, let’s rewind to the beginning when I found a mirror with a jacked-up surface (scratches and old paint) but with a great hexagon frame so for only $7 this guy and I became fast friends. 

Yes, the mirror came to my home where it sat around and did nothing except take up space like an unwanted house guest.  Each time I went into the room it was stashed in, awkward small talk occurred and I just kept wondering when this mirror was going to get off my floor and go find a job.  Upon remembering that inanimate objects do not often obtain their own occupations, I gracefully decided to give the little guy some extra help.

Which went terribly wrong.

My original intentions started off so well.  I was inspired by the chalkboard pegboard in our garage where, during my husband’s 30^th Birthday BBQ, several friends wrote and doodled on the board.  For months, the drawings stayed and gave me a happy memory to smile at each time I went into the garage.  Hoping to create a more accessible surface to mark up during parties, I had the idea of adding a framed chalkboard to our guest bathroom.  I had imagined a beautiful deep purple frame with an oil rubbed bronze accent against the black of the chalkboard paint.  In my mind, it looked amazing.     

My plan seemed easy enough.  Paint the frame a better color, put chalkboard paint on the glass, hang in bathroom, and allow for fun i.e. inappropriate drawings to occur.  The frame surface was sanded, primer was added, and then this happened. 

Did I not sand enough?  Not enough primer?  Just a terrible color in the first place?  The answer to all these questions was yes.  Upon this devastating defeat, the mirror was shoved into a corner to be forgotten about temporarily until one magical word came to mind. 

Rope.

If I couldn’t paint the mirror frame (or simply couldn’t bring myself to attempt to paint the frame again because a second defeat would send me down a craft shame spiral), I would find a way to cover it up.  I had originally come across the rope idea on Pinterest, of course.  Although, the inspiration picture and the my final result ended up quite different.

My original plan with this pin was to make what the pin showed.  My bathroom has an octopus/nautical theme so the idea of rope storage accessories seemed like a smart move.  Nautical means ships and ships have rope on them.  Makes perfect sense.   Plus, everything in a bathroom is usually so sleek and smooth so adding the rough, natural texture of the rope seemed like a great way to add a layer to the room.  

Source: thegildedhare.blogspot.com via Megan on Pinterest

After the original chalkboard mirror plan went kaput, I took a few moments to curse my frustrations away and then remembered the above pin.  Realizing that rope solved the problem of my crap paint job amazingly well by simply covering it up made me do a little jig that may or may not have looked glaringly similar to Elaine's "little kicks" dancing.  This also lined up beautifully with Young House Love's quarterly Pinterest Challenge where this adorable couple encourages everyone to stop pinning and actually create something.  A very common ailment of Pinterest is all pins and no action so I was only too happy to join in this challenge!     

On round two with the mirror, I started with the chalkboard section of the project first.  To prep the glass, I roughed up the surface with coarse sandpaper; sprayed it with two layers of primer, and finally painted on two coats of chalkboard paint.  

BAM!  Done.

I didn’t worry too much about getting the chalkboard paint on the frame because, as mentioned previously, the name of game is cover-up.  So, using a glue gun and a $5 ball of rope, I slowly worked my way around the frame placing blobs of glue every couple inches while wrapping the rope around the frame.  A few minutes in and my little friend started looking something like this.  Or exactly like this.  Because that’s how pictures work.  

About halfway through this project, just as I was getting into my glue gun groove, I ran out of glue sticks....  

Such a crafting tragedy.  A tragedy that was quickly remedied two days later when I procured more glue sticks.  One burned finger later and I end up with this. 

Unluckily, this mirror had no hanging apparatus when I purchased it so I can only assume it stayed on someone else’s wall through magic.  Seeing as how I never received my letter to Hogwart’s, I was forced to purchase these picture hangers and nail them to the back of the mirror.

Attaching these things is super easy.  Just figure out the placement and hammer the tiny nails (included in package) into the frame.  The only real hazard is if you have large fingers, you're going to smash them with the hammer.  Can't be avoided.  Sorry.

The next step in this project was to answer the question, "Where will the chalk go?"  One good wander around Lowe's and the answer presented itself.  I picked up two drawer pulls and decided to flip them upside down so they'd essentially turn into a little storage space.

Only one small snag occurred when I got these home and realized that, yea, they're drawer pulls so obviously the hardware for them would go through the drawer and I had no way of attaching these to a wall.

One brilliant MacGyver thought later (hammer nails into the wall, add a dollop of glue, and slip the drawer pull onto the nails) and my chalk storage was ready to go! 

Here is the before picture of my bathroom.  I apologize in advance for these shots.  This bathroom gets ZERO natural light and is narrow like most bathrooms so snapping a decent picture proved irritatingly prickly.  I digress, this is what the bathroom looked like before hanging the chalkboard mirror.  

Here's is what it looked like after the fabulous addition of the chalkboard mirror.

Here's a not mirror reflection shot.  I love how the frame fills up the normally untouched blank space behind the door.

Close up of drawer pulls/chalkboard hangers.

I cannot wait until our next party!  I envision taking pictures of the chalkboard at the end of every shindig and making a coffee table book so when we’re old and wrinkly and gross, the husband and I can look back and remember that at one point in our lives, we threw some kick-ass parties.

**Update**

The husband texted this photo to me this morning so he's obviously already enjoying the new addition. 

I love lamp...only after it cleans itself up though

Oh, hello garage sale lamp my husband picked up to resell on Craigslist for a profit.  What's that?  You'd rather I clean you up into something less 50's brothel and stay home with me.  OKAY!

So that's my story.  This project was quick, easy, and resulted in some much needed extra lighting in our living room.  Previously, we had zero lamps in that room which was insanely annoying.  At night, it was either full overhead lighting or total darkness.  I'm more of an in between person when it comes to my lighting preference.  When BJ brought this lamp home, I was instantly in love.  It's so unique with the curved details of the metal that holds that glass white spotted glass shade.  The color of the base needed some work though.  It's that old antiquey but not in a good way bronze-brass color.  



Goodness, do we a fence or what....

These beads are terrible too.  They remind me of the leg lamp from A Christmas Story but not in a pleasant way which seems almost impossible to do when it comes to that movie.  Besides, as soon as this lamp was brought inside, the cats were WAY too into it.  Hobbes stared and talked to it anytime they were allowed in the same room together and Yigs stared it down the way she does to everything she intends to stalk/attack.  If I didn't remove the beads, the kittens surely would have in a much more destructive way.

Luckily, whoever added these beads must have realized how terrible they would be perceived in the future and made them easy to remove.  Velcro, people.  It's a miracle.

Here, you can also see a more detailed view of the original color of the lamp base.  I don't hate it but with the way our house is currently styled, this color would have popped out in a not so good way.

As you could probably surmise from the above pictures where this lamp is sitting on a piece of cardboard outside, I opted for my go-to when it comes to makeovers and planned on spray painting the base of the lamp an oil rubbed bronze color.  Prior to painting, I wiped the whole lamp down to clean up any dust/grime so the spray paint would have a clean surface to grab onto.  The only other prep work was wrapping some masking tape around the electrical element whatever that the bulb screws into and putting the cord in a plastic bag.  Three steps that took all of five minutes and then it was spray painting time.

One spray paint montage later and we have this.

Ah! Ghost!

So much better without the beads

Close up of the new color



Okay, so truth telling time.  I like how the lamp turned out and I LOVE having the extra lighting in the living room but I hate the way the lamp looks in the room.  A floor lamp just isn't going to work here.  It also feels dwarfed by the overall size of the room. 



Aw, it's just a lil' guy

Plus, we have a bit of a walkway on this side of the couch and the lamp gets in the way of that.  With my klutzy tendencies, having an obstacle in a walking path is a combination for trouble.  Or a combination for a broken lamp. 


Find the cat....and ignore the mess....

 So, as a result of all this, my newly redone lamp has not found it's permanent home as of yet.  It's still chilling in the living room until I can figure something else out because, as I've stated, the extra lighting is awesome.  There's a table lamp in our den that I may switch out here after some furniture switch-a-roos.  I love a good room makeover that costs nothing.  And who knows.  Once I find a permanent spot for this lamp, I may spray paint it an entirely different color.  Hence why spray paint is so awesome. The lesson learned from this whole project though was that floor lamps are not going to work in our living room. 

Also maybe put the lamp in the room before you paint it to see how it looks.  I just get so excited to work on stuff sometimes....I'm working on it....I was also a bit desperate for a quick project to post up this week.  Either way, if the lamp doesn't end up anywhere else in the house, it'll just fulfill its original desitiny and end up on Craigslist. 

Bookcase Redo: Wine Bar Edition

So let’s make a long story short and then make it medium length.  One day I looked at the bookcase pictured below and thought, “That could totally be a wine bar.”  In probably what will prove to be record time, I thought of an idea and managed to execute it in the span of a day.  Good for me. 

On to the medium length story, the below bookcase sits in the corner of my kitchen with his buddy Wine Fridge where they hang out having grand adventures of keeping my booze at the proper temperature and storing serving pieces/cookbooks.  As you can see, the contents of the bookcase are pretty sparse and no matter how many times I wandered through the house looking for other pieces to make this look like a real space and not something that was thrown together in a corner (which it totally was) I kept coming up empty.  The husband and I just do not have that many decorative pieces.  Moving from a one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom home left a desire for a lot of different items and we’ve focused our extra money towards other things, like a kitchen table, bookcases, computer desk, etc. and not necessarily towards items to help beautify and personalize our home.

All in all, I like the placement of the bookcase, it helps adds some nice height to the corner and seems to ground the eating area.  But it lacked something to make it a stand-out piece.  And then the wine bar idea came to me. 

 

The only materials I needed to purchase were two of the upside down wine glass hangers.  One trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and $20 bucks later, I was all set to go.  After empting the top half of this bookcase (actual shelf area and cupboard are not connected) I enlisted some help from the muscles of the family i.e. the fella, and finagled the shelving half to the floor to get to work.

Attaching the glass holders took all of ten minutes.  The only tricky part of this process was I was attaching them to a fixed shelf (could not be easily/at all removed without taking the entire thing apart) so I was working sideways the whole time.  However you are working on this step though, whether it be sideways, from the top, upside down, or perhaps under water, simply place the hangers where you want them and mark the holes where the hardware is going to go.  I drilled small pilot holes as well, taking extra care not to drill straight through the shelf, so there was less chance of splitting the wood and the screws went in really easy.  Honestly, I probably could have skipped this step, but I like using power tools so I'll take any excuse to bust out the electric drill.

Not pictured: Hobbes on the other side of this shelf attacking the back of the bookcase.  Bookcase backings are apparently really threatening.

This project also allowed me to do something I’ve been dying to try which is add a paper or fabric backing to a bookcase. The pop of color and texture poking out from behind items displayed on a bookcase just makes me smile.  After digging through my fabric stockpile, I found a couple yards of a neat geometric pattern in a kelly green color.  The backing on this bookcase was the flimsy kind that was held in place by tack nails so it was easily pried up using the claw side of a hammer.  Once that was up, I used a staple gun to fix the fabric in place, trimmed the excess off, and then replaced the flimsy backing using some fresh tack nails being careful not to hammer them into the newly added staples.  Am I the only one who has a ton of leftover tack nails from assembling furniture?  I can never seem to use all of them up on their designated piece.



Back of shelving with backing removed



Hold the fabric tight as you staple around the edges. 



Kitten interruption: one of the many hazards of crafting



Shelving dekittened and excess fabric trimmed off.

Once the backing was back in place, the fella and I returned the shelving to its proper place and BAM, instant wine bar….well, almost.

A few glasses and accessories later and then BAM, instant wine bar.  Pictured here are a variety of wine glasses including our only set of champagne glasses that have Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas printed on them because that’s where we got married and they were free with the wedding package we chose.  So yea, we’re pretty fancy.  Also pictured is a half drank bottle of wine which used to take up space on the kitchen counter before I made this beautiful new home for it.  To help with the drinking of wine, I also snagged a small tray (pilfered from another room) to house a couple bottle openers, a foil cutter, and a glass container to collect corks. 

Yep, vintage milkshake tray to hold wine stuff.



Overall, I’m pretty stoked about this project.  It still needs a little tweaking, maybe a small piece of artwork to go in the glaringly empty space between the bottle of wine and the tray.  But, next time we have a party, I can totally see a couple open bottles of wine along with small bowls filled with antipasto goodies for snacking being stationed here.  Also, bonus, having the majority of our wine glasses in this spot cleared out some much needed space in our kitchen cupboards.