Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

The building works in our master bedroom are more or less complete. When we moved in, it was a complete smelly mess of pee stained carpet, dirty walls, torn wallpaper and dodgy electrics.

Now, a bit over three years later, there are still a few things here and there that need sorting – like the window that we’d eventually like to replace, but in general it’s one of our most finished rooms in the house.

Although our building work is more or less completed, the room is definitely still lacking in personality and a lot of those finishing touches that make it feel welcoming. So here’s our newest addition to the room!

We really love how our new DIY wood mirror turned out. The size is pretty much perfect for the space and the different thicknesses of wood that we’ve used really give it an interesting texture.

It really wasn’t difficult to make and if you’d like to make one of your own, this is how we made it.

What you will need:

• A mirror (we used KOLJA from IKEA)
• Wood Stain
• No Nails Glue
• Wood Glue Old Rag and Gloved to apply stain
• Wood strips
• Plywood as backing base (we used some hardboard which we still had lying around)
• Saw (we used our new fancy mitre saw which made things very easy. At a push, a normal handsaw would do, it’ll just take a lot! longer to cut the pieces)
• Jigsaw
• Sandpaper
• Pencil, string & glue
• Mirror hangers & screws

How to make it:

Start by working out the overall size of the mirror and frame that you want to make and roughly cut out the shape you want out of a large piece of wood (we used hardboard). There’s no need to be too exact at this point as you will have to trim the mirror when you’ve finished gluing your wood strips into place.

After you’ve prepared your base, continue to cut your wood strips into a load of short, same sized pieces. We cut ours to exactly four times the width of the wood strip.

We used our fancy new mire saw for all of the cutting. To make sure that all pieces are exactly the same length, we attached a board to one side of the saw, so that we were able to push the wood strips against it without having to measure each piece individually.

Then, we just glued the strips onto the prepared base with some wood glue.

Our tip: Don’t get any glue on the top of the wood pieces. Wood stain won’t cover where there is glue. 

The next step (after letting everything dry thoroughly) is to cut the wood frame into the shape you’d like. We decided a circle would be best for us, so we drilled a hole into the centre of the board and with the help of some string and a pencil marked out the outer and inner circles for the frame.

Trying to be exact as possible, we then carefully cut along the lines with our jig saw.

Our tip: Because we used two different thicknesses for our wood strips, it was really difficult to cut a neat line with the jigsaw. If you attempt to make a mirror of your own, it would probably be much easier to cut out if you draw the circle on the reverse (flat) side of your mirror and then cut it out.

After cutting out the frame and giving everything a quick sand, we stained everything with some wood dye (the same one we used for our staircase).

We achieved the look we wanted with just one coat of the stain. We love the way the darker stain really brings out the different thicknesses of the wood strips.

After preparing the frame, the last step is to attach the mirror. We used some No Nails glue to stick it onto the back of the frame.

Because we didn’t want to see any fixings, we used some self-gluing wall brackets that stick to the back of the frame to hang it to the wall.

And after a few more dodgy calculations, this is the result!

We’re really happy with the new mirror. It definitely make the room feel more finished.

Have you ever made your own DIY wood mirror? Do you have suggestions to further finish off the room?