Transform an Old Mirror with Color

We’ve had FIVE houses in just seven years. Each one of those houses had…a lot of rooms. Most of which I designed (and painted…and whined about painting). So after moving into the latest and greatest, we started realizing this STUFF worked perfectly in our previous spaces, but totally stick out like sore thumbs here. SO rather than buying new, we took an afternoon to transform the old! Today we’re going to transform an old mirror with COLOR!

Here’s the mirror in all of it’s (former) glory. Notice the remnants of our rainy July 4th parade streamers in the background.

It’s got that distressed look going on. Or coming off.

A few months ago I grabbed some random paint samples…because I tend to do that. This color “mystic sea” by valspar should fit into our living room nicely. We’ve got blue accents throughout and are looking to pull it all together.

We start by masking off the mirror to try and keep the paint off.

I usually stop short of the corners…

Rip a small piece of masking tape…

And mask the corner in as needed.

Looks good!

Round 1…PAINT!

Here I am liberally applying the paint while quality control watches not so silently behind me!

I always go light on the first coat otherwise the paint will go on too thick and will take FOREVER to dry.

After a few hours, we double checked to make sure the paint wasn’t sticky and then got started on the second coat.

We went on a little bit thicker this time.

And a few hours after that (when 95% of the frame was dry), I removed the masking tape…

And there was a ton of paint bleeding onto the mirror! AHHH! After panicking and wiping furiously where I could reach…I took a step back. I decided to wait for the paint to dry and then scraped it off with a putty knife and my finger nail. It came off very easily. I’ve got no chill.

And there we have it!

And here it is hanging in the living room! You’ll notice a HUGE amount of negative space on the left. Don’t worry, it’s not staying that way! Stay tuned for the next rick at home short where we build something extra special for that spot!