Mirrors, mirrors, on the wall.

You saw our master bedroom in our last blog post a few weeks ago, and how we haven’t really touched it in 2 years since we bought the furniture.

The wall behind the bed has been looking pretty empty, especially since it’s still “white” from the last owners. I was eyeing up things to hang above the bed for awhile, but could never really decide on anything. Art maybe? A mirror? I decided to look back on my Master Bedroom board on Pinterest and remembered that I liked a lot of looks that had windows or mirrors behind the lamps.

So while we can’t do the windows, I really love that picture above with the mirrors behind the lamps. Plus, at night, it would really help brighten the room a bit more. We have a [tiny] ceiling fan with a light on it in there that I’m not in love with. One, because it’s tiny, and two, because I’m just not a big fan of overhead lighting from ceiling fans. I’d much prefer the light from lamps in bedrooms. How about you?

So, I found these ugly gold mirrors on our local Facebook resale group for $10. They had the height I was looking for (not QUITE as high as the picture above, but enough), and they had a simple enough design on them and they weren’t too gaudy.

I was planning on spray painting the frames, so I took some high grit sandpaper all over it to try and get off any old flecks of paint. They look like they had been painted before, because it was revealing some silver-ish color underneath.

Next came the cleaning. I gave them a good wipe down, and then took some warm water and an old tooth brush in between all of the nooks and crannies.

Let’s just say that the water got A LOT darker the more I worked. Bleck.

I let them dry out over night and then taped up the mirror to prepare for the spray painting.

I chose the typical Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

Partly because I already had it from some other projects, and also because I thought it would play really nicely with the hardware on our West Elm dressers/nightstands.

After a few light coats, they turned out great!

…Except that my taping job was apparently not so great. I should have taped the perimeter of that cardboard apparently. Oh well, learned my lesson for next time.

It was easy enough to remove. I grabbed our flat razor blade and easily scraped it all off.

Next step, hang them up! Now, because this is real life, all of this prep and spray paint was done in the fall when the weather was actually bearable to sit outside and do this type of work in the driveway. And these mirrors have been sitting in our room against the wall ever since. #lazy. But, finally! Here they are, all hung up in their glory!

And glory is it? I’m not really sure. We hung them up and that oil rubbed bronze just kind of rubs me the wrong way. HA! I don’t know, We’ve had them up for about a week now, and they’re starting to grow on me. I’m not crazy about how it looks with the navy blue lamps, like they are both too dark for each other? What do you think?

I definitely need something over the bed now. I’m thinking some frames in threes. I’m thinking I’ll wait some time and see if I want to change the color of them. Maybe a light brassy/golden color to go with the base of the lamps?? I’m just not sure.

What do you think? Even if I’m not 100% happy with it, I still consider it progress. I’m always second guessing myself, but I think that really helps me figure out my style. Fortunately, this was a pretty cheap project to experiment with, but still, I think it allows me to figure out what I really like and what really goes together, at least in my mind.

Here are some before and afters!