Antique DIY Mirror

When hubby arrived home with an old slide robe door hanging out of the back of his van I nearly had a fit.  It was massive, we had just moved into the house and the place was upside down and the last thing I needed was someone else’s rubbish. I couldn’t understand what he expected me to do with it.  However, he knew that the mirror was the perfect fit for the wall behind our bedroom door, (which I had planned to put a mirror on), so I had to come up with a plan to make this one look nice.

The old slide robe mirror that I upcycled

This was the inspo!

I had spied a gorgeous mirror online that was £300 and outside our budget but thought I’d try and turn this redundant slide robe door into one that looked just like it.

First job was to remove the old brass frame from the door and the skirting board from the wall. 

We had to dig out a shallow trench in the concrete floor as it was tight squeeze. To prevent the glass breaking we lined the trench with a layer of foam rubber.  The mirror was stuck onto the wall with strong builders adhesive and we kept it in place whilst the glue cured with some wood brackets screwed into the wall on either side.

Once it was safe to do so we removed the wooden brackets and attached the skirting board back in place. Then we used lengths of door architrave to make a frame around the mirror.

During this time we had also completed the painting of the bedroom and second fix joinery.

I made a plan of the decorative elements I wanted to add to the frame and purchased wooden mouldings from Amazon. Before attaching to the frame I painted both the moulding and the frame with Rustoleum gold paint.

I used a laser level and hot glue gun to stick the mouldings into the desired places.

I think I will add some dark wax to the gold to give it a more vintage look but I’m delighted with how it turned out.

It just shows what you can do with a little bit of imagination. And with the only outgoings being the paint and the mouldings, we saved ourselves over £260 by diying this mirror.

The large DIY antique mirror