Mirror Mirror

It is hard for me to believe, but we just reached the five year mark of being in our house!  We've done quite a few house projects since Brian is incredibly handy and in a strange sort of way, random projects seem to qualify as date night for us!  One project that I've wanted to do since we moved in though is to replace the big builder mirror in our master bathroom with two framed mirrors so it would look a little more special.  Our house has all white cabinets with white plastic laminate counter tops so it looks kind of "blah" so the mirror seemed like an easy fix to give it some extra personality.  However, I fully acknowledge this is totally a first world problem since even though I might wish I had nicer counters, they still work great and look really clean.  I found a couple mirrors that I loved at Target on clearance for only $30 apiece so I thought it might be time to give it a try!

Brian took down the old mirror.  It was glued to the wall since it is so close to the window casings that there was no room for the builder to slide it into tracks that they sometimes use.  To get it down, he used a hammer and had at it!  Let's just say the kids were horrified since this qualifies as something that we've told them to never ever do...

Underneath, we found wall paper from the previous owners!  Apparently the builder had installed it since it was under the mirror.  Got to love the mid 90's colors!  As a side note, whenever a builder has installed wallpaper, be very very careful peeling it!  Typically, they don't always do it right and prime first which means the paper is glued directly to the drywall.  If this is the case, it is incredibly easy to peel chunks of drywall off.  This was the case in our powder room and so we just papered over it rather than replace all of the drywall because it was so damaged.  We peeled this paper really carefully and then Brian puttied over it to repair the damage.  Then we decided that it was too damaged since the layers of drywall had separated from the weight of the mirror and kept puffing up no matter how much we tried to repair.  So we went to plan B.


We had to replace the drywall.  We've never actually done a piece this big before so it was a new one on our home repair list!  Brian cut out the dry wall piece which really confused Luke.  A couple weeks ago we discovered what Luke has been doing with his bedroom door closed:  there was a softball sized hole in the drywall behind his door that he was slowly enlarging and hiding toys in.  Why?  We never got a straight answer, but suffice it to say, it seemed to make sense in his five year old mind...  Never a dull moment around here!

With the edges mudded and the screw holes puttied and sanded so the new wall was perfectly smooth, we primed and painted.  We had extra paint from when we painted the bathroom a few years ago.  As a random tip, we use the same paint colors in multiple places in the house so it makes it easier when retouching things since there aren't too many colors to work with (but be careful since we accidentally used the wrong color once and had splotches all over the house!  It was kind of funny though!).  We also used the same color, Valspar Milestone, in the nursery for the jungle theme where I painted a mural on the ceiling here.

The finished product came out looking so much more spa-like and so much more special than the builder basic mirror that covered the whole wall.  When our 7 year old came in and saw it, Ethan exclaimed, "It's so beautiful!"  I have to agree and thanks for all of your work, Bri!  Love you!