Picture a few pieces of really scrappy wood, shoved behind an old broken gate. Then picture my husband's face when I told him I'd like us to turn that into THIS. A gorgeous octagon-shaped mirror. I was so inspired by Kelly's awesome tutorial on 'View Along The Way', that we just had to try it. We were still living in our home in Waterfall at the time, and I had originally planned for this mirror to go right above an entrance table. When we moved to Pietermaritzburg, our entrance layout changed and we decided to use it as a focal point for the dining room instead. I um-ed and ah-ed about this idea a little at first, but Clint was convinced and I am so glad he pushed me in the right direction. You can see an update on our dining room here.
Okay, now let's get really real. If we thought we were going to whip the frame right up and have it painted by dinner, boy were we wrong. I was relieved that Kelly and her husband had trouble with this project too or I would seriously be questioning if we'd lost the DIY touch.
Once Clint had sanded the gross pieces of wood down, I was in charge of drawing the correct angles on to each piece for cutting. I thought I had done the most perfect job, obviously. Clint set off to his folks place to cut the pieces, and we were both generally feeling rather pleased with ourselves. He returned and lay everything out on the table. Our OCTA....wait, hang on...how many pieces did you cut?! NINE pieces, I tell you. Nine. I totally messed up the angles, which meant as he went along, it made sense to add another piece to close the frame. Let's take a moment of silence for the Octagon mirror dream being shattered. The silver lining? We were going to have an awesome GEOMETRIC mirror instead - go us!
We played around with a few (a lot) of ideas of how to attach the mirror securely and ended up going with the following:
1. We used framing nails to secure the pieces, creating the frame
2. We cut masonite board to the exact shape of the frame and nailed it to the back
3. We went to PG Glass and they kindly cut the mirror to fit perfectly inside our shape, then glued it
Clint painted the frame with Annie Sloan chalk paint in 'Pure White', followed by a clear furniture sealer. He then sanded down bits here and there to give it a weathered look. We added hardware to the back of the frame and finally, after 6 months of procrastinating (on and off working on it), we hung it proudly in our new home. It is by far my favourite item in all of the rooms.
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