Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Mirror Fiasco

Ok. Its time for me to come clean.
Not too long ago I did THIS little post about cutting mirrors to the size you want--Easy Schmeasy. But the truth is that AFTER I posted about it--I had some catastrophic problems! And now enough time has passed...my wounds have healed enough for me to be able to write about it.
So here is the whole story:
I was on the look out for something to hang above my bed. I figured a mirror would be perfect. SO I found one such mirror at the thrift store for $5.99. This is what it looked like. (just imagine the mirror inside the frame--I had already taken it out when I realized I needed a picture).

What a Beauty! Right? Well--it had potential. It was a good size and I liked the clean lines of the frame.

Here is a close up of this lovely little frame BEFORE I went to work on it. So inspirational isn't it?

So after I got the mirror home--I realized that it was not just dirty--but scratched as well. BUMMER!

So instead of scrapping the whole idea--I decided to buy an inexpensive piece of mirror ($2.50--which should have cost me $5 but I got a deal that I will tell you about later--I know does this story ever end?)

The mirror was the perfect height--but too long. SO this is where I decided to cut it myself. And I did! And it WAS easy! Remember this picture?

Do you also remember the two pieces of advice I gave when cutting the mirror?

First: the part where you must score the mirror EXACTLY on the line? The cutting tool has a little edge on it (about 1/8th of an inch) and if you place your ruler on the line and run your tool along the edge you may be OVER about an 8th of an inch!!!)

And if you make 2 cuts--one on each side of the mirror to capitalize on the best parts of the used mirror, you may find that you have an extra 8th of an inch on BOTH SIDES of your mirror.

Which in turn amounts to 1/4 of an inch and makes it TOO BIG and then it will not fit into the frame that you took DAYS sanding and painting!!!!!!

And then you might have to go against the other cardinal rule of mirror cutting and try and cut LESS than an inch off so that it will fit into the blessed frame.

Then when you do--the mirror might not cut exactly where you scored it--and it might break the WHOLE MIRROR (and then you might be so mad that you forget to take a picture of the thing to document it). And then you might be left with an awesome frame and NO MIRROR!!!!

But you then may insist that your husband hang the blessed frame above your bed anyways because you worked so hard--and darn it--you are going to have SOMETHING to show for it!!

And then it might look like this for a few days or weeks till you can get up the nerve to try to do it all over again:




Like I said before: Mirror cutting IS easy schmeasy...just measure carefully!

P.S. What do you think about the sconses on either side? I'm trying to decide if I should paint them a silver or brushed nickel or just leave them.

Anyone?

4 comments:

  1. I love them black! I think it's such a nice contrast to the stark white of the frame and the headboard. I say leave them.

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  2. I agree with Laura...leave them black! The contrast is great. Be brave try the mirror again. You can do it and then you won't have an 'opps' staring you in the face everytime you go into your room.

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  3. I agree- the black contrast is nice. If you decide not to go back to a mirror, you can put fabric in the back of the frame for color and put a small wispy wreath in there.

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  4. I'm reading this months after your post, but I agree leave them black. Ran across your blog randomly when I was looking at a blog that referred me to a blog that referred me here. Crazy...big ol' world wide web. Well, I'm in love with your blog so you ARE now on my list of "adored blogs"! Happy day and thanks for all the tips.

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Thank you for your comments!

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