DIY Bathroom Mirror Frame for less than $20

I've mentioned before how ugly our upstairs guest bathroom was before we attacked it with paint. The previous owners had installed nice stone tile on the floors, tub surround, and vanity top and then ruined the pretty effect with bright white (I think of it as apartment white) paint on the walls and a horrible peachy orange paint on the cabinets. We could only stand that for about a month after move-in before we broke out the paint brushes and painted the walls a warm cream and the vanity a chocolate brown. That definitely made the bathroom better.

 All that was left was the enormous 3'x5' blank builder's mirror - which isn't ugly, just plain.

I found a whole bunch of links on Pinterest from bloggers who updated their plain mirrors with trim from the hardware store (check out what seems to be the most popular tutorial here) and I figured that was a fast, easy fix. 

And it was! We bought 20 feet worth of pre-primed wood composite door trim from Lowe's, my dear husband cut the angles on his shiny new miter saw (Also bought that same trip at Lowe's. New project, new tool, right? Although it's perfectly easy to do this small project with a miter box and hand saw.) Then he used our rotary tool to cut grooves in the back of the trim for the mirror's hanging brackets, so the frame would lay flat against the glass. I painted the trim with two coats of the left over chocolate brown semi-gloss paint from the cabinets, then we just glued it directly on top of the edges of the mirror with Liquid Nails adhesive for mirrors. Simple! And super easy and fast. The longest part of it was waiting for the first coat of paint to dry in our cold garage.

Here's the result:

Nice, huh? Definitely looks more polished than the previous huge blank expanse of mirror. And for only around $20!

• Three 7 foot pieces of pre-primed composite door casing trim - $15. There were way too many options for moulding - if you wanted something more decorative, the real wood moulding, while more expensive, had prettier patterns. But we figured that we were going to paint the trim anyway, so we would go with the simpler, cheaper option. We could have also saved a few bucks by buying a 10 foot piece and a 7 foot piece, but it wouldn't fit in our little hatchback.
• Liquid Nails adhesive for mirrors, marble and granite - $5. This stuff seems very solid. It stuck to the mirror right away, with just a little wiggle time - so work fast while placing the pieces or you'll have permanently off kilter angles.
• Semi-gloss latex paint - free! I used leftover paint, but this project needs so little paint that you could probably buy one of those little $3 tester jars and have more than enough.

And if you don't have a miter box, cutting the 45 degree angles could still technically be free because Home Depot and Lowe's both have cutting stations with saws and miter boxes. Just as long as you have measured very carefully, you could cut everything in the store.

This was such a fun easy project that I wish our house had more mirrors to frame, but alas, that was the only one. What should we pick for the next project? So many choices!

Bathroom Organization Part 1: Guest Bath Vanity

I took a detour from the kitchen to clean out the guest bathroom vanity. (I'm still trying to devise a bakeware storage solution for the blind corner cabinet in our kitchen island. It will take a trip to Home Depot and some time with power tools before I can get that done...)

Here's how the bathroom vanity looked before I cleaned it out:

I went through the under-sink cabinet and threw out three grocery bags full of expired toiletries (I think I found sunscreen that I hadn't touched since we got married - that would be 8 years!). That freed up a whole bunch of space to move the cleaning supplies from the shelves into a newly emptied plastic bin under the sink. Then I corralled all of the guest and extra shampoos and conditioners in a dollar store basket. Here's the result:

It doesn't look radically different, but the shelves in the cabinet to the left are completely empty. I don't even know what I'm going to store in there, but it's nice to have empty shelves!

The drawers to the right are also now almost completely empty. I left the top drawer for guests toiletries. My mother-in-law comes from overseas for long visits, so this will give here a place to put her brush and toothbrush.

The middle drawer is my first aid station: with band-aids, sinus and allergy medication, and other health odds-and-ends corralled in the little plastic bin that I emptied out from the under-sink cabinet.

The bottom drawer is also nearly empty. Right now it has the five empty air freshener plug-ins that I found while cleaning out the other drawers. Five! I guess we don't need to buy the warmers anymore, just refills - and we can have one for practically each room of the house!

While we are in the bathroom, I think I'll mention that this guest room was the first room of the house that we got mostly decorated. Here's a before (more like during) and after:

I just realized we don't actually have any full room "before" pictures (say hi to the bottom half of my husband, changing the faucet), but this one gives a good idea of the horrible color the previous owners had painted the vanity - a peachy orange tan, almost perfectly blended in with the floor tiles and the vanity top. With chipped silver hardware centered in the middle of each cabinet door (same in the kitchen too, only wood, why?!) Ugly...

So I repainted the vanity with chocolate brown semigloss paint and changed out the cabinet hardware for oil rubbed bronze - and moved the cabinet pulls to the sides of each cabinet door. We replaced the chrome builders-grade faucet (low arc, crystal handle... blah...) with a higher arc oil rubbed bronze faucet. We got bronze light fixtures as well - ceiling and above the mirror, and bronze towel bars. I also spray painted the air vent grate and the recessed toilet paper with Rustoleum Universal Metallic in Oil Rubbed Bronze. Then we topped it all off with brown rugs and shower curtain from Target. Probably less than $250 for the entire re-do (most of that being the faucet).

Sometime this month, I think I'll get some wood trim from Home Depot, paint it the same color as the cabinets, and make a frame for the bare mirror.

Better, right? Some of the decorating decisions the previous owners made were suspect (You'll laugh if I show you the master bath. I imagine a picture will show up here eventually). We are slowly working through them.

Next up in need of organization in the guest bathroom is the linen closet.