{ simple mirror makeover. }

Hi all! I am so excited to be sharing another post with you. I realize that in my last post I talked about how I would hopefully be blogging more this year… then I think I became over enthusiast about it because I started a bunch of brainstorming and different projects all at once, so that has subsequently resulted in not really finishing anything, and instead having a few things on the go. Which, I have discovered, means I don’t have anything complete to blog about! I’m sure one day I’ll figure out how to do this better.

Anyways, over the weekend we decided to tackle something that I’ve wanted to do for quite some time – refinishing the stand up mirror in our bedroom! My husband had this wood framed mirror (that was plain black, of course) from his bachelor days. It was alright looking, but not really my taste, so I thought it was finally time for a make-over. I’ve really been wanting to lighten up the colours in our bedroom, and in doing so I thought changing the colour of this mirror to a nice white would bring us steps towards that, Since the mirror is a bigger piece and it is a small room, it has really made a difference!

Here is the mirror when we were starting out…

Don’t mind the lovely drop cloth set up in the back there. First we took a really fine grit sandpaper to the whole thing..

Once we sanded it down we started painting! I went with some chalk paint for this project to give it that nice vintage look. Here is what I used..

You could definitely make your own chalk paint or order some online to save money, but I kind of decided a day or two beforehand that I wanted to paint the mirror, so I didn’t have time for any of that smart thinking.
This cottage paint colour was called “Cloudy Day”.

My hubby took over painting for awhile once my wrist started cramping… he probably also did a way better job, haha.

Once it was all painted I took a wet rag and wiped areas so that a little bit of the darker colour would show through and give it a slightly distressed look. I kept this to a minimum though as I didn’t want it to look too overly rustic.
We ended up doing two coats, and I used the rag on areas I wanted distressed after both coats. You may not have to do this depending on how quickly you work, but of course the longer you let the paint dry, the harder it is to remove, and I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take so I was keeping on the safe side.

After that we let it dry overnight. I was originally going to use the acrylic wax that was shown in the picture with the paint, but once I started on one of the sides I found that even after drying it gave it more of a shiny look (even though it was a satin finish, which is usually not glossy). I know you should seal it to protect the paint, so maybe I will do that one day once I find something more matte, but for now I have just left it. So, after the paint was dry, we had a brand new (ish) mirror! Here is how it looks in the bedroom.

See how much nicer it makes the room look? You may also spy our bed looking a bit different… Yes, we are indeed doing a full bedroom makeover! There is currently a headboard lacking, however it will be a post you’ll see over the next couple of months.

This project was really simple and didn’t take much time at all. It’s amazing what a little bit of paint can do. You can also see some of the distressing here.

This project has made me love white paint, and chalk paint specifically. It’s quite forgiving, and really easy to use. I’m sure I’ll be using it on many projects to come.

Thanks for stopping by!

— Rachel, at The Porch Light Cottage