Ugly 1985 Mirror Redo

I have two pieces of information regarding the furniture in my house:

1.Every Piece is a hand me down from either a family member’s garage, my grandma, or my aunt

2.I do not have any furniture debt

I have to remind myself of number 2 every time someone comes over and I am embarrassed of our furniture.

On my pinterest board , I have lots of wonderful ideas and am going to re-design every item for under $20 one weekend at a time!

This mirror was my first victim.  I have never liked it but need a full length mirror.  The one I want is over $200 and quite frankly with me gaining weight, I try not to look at myself much.  I am certainly not going to pay $200 to see myself better!

I am grinning at myself for taking the time to “prep”.

I sanded down the entire mirror for maybe five minutes.  Yea, I guess sanded is being used loosely but I didn’t want to waste much time on this since I had no clue what I was doing.  It wasn’t like I would miss it if I ruined it and was forced to throw it out.

Then I sprayed it down with white spray primer from Walmart. I even splurged and got the $3.99 cans.  It took two cans.

Then I spray painted it an off white (but not beige really) color

I let it dry overnight then took my piece of sand paper to it the next day.  I realized I should’ve sanded more because the paint was scratching  off very easy.  Oh well. Again, this is an experiment

I mixed some Espresso colored furniture stain from Sherwin Williams half and half with water.  That was way too watery.  so I added more stain until it would at least stick a little.  I took old, damp wash rags and dipped in my mixture then spread it on the wood everywhere. I would work on section at a time, applying then wiping off with another damp rag.

OMG!!!  That big brown part would not grab the stain! It never did!!!  I still can’t figure out why!
I thought it turned out really well for $12.  I already had the stain from something else so I only had to get the four cans of spray paint.  I am really not into the distressed craze nor do I understand it .  But for people like me who do not want to take the time to sand or have no clue what they’re doing it is kind of cool.  I think a couple of pieces in a house is plenty though.  Of course, you can tell by the reverse image in the mirror and by my rotted chest of drawers in this pic, I by no means am an interior designer ……. as of yet.

I am sure as soon as I hit Publish on this project, Joanna will be giving me a call begging me to give her advice and be her new assistant.