Bathroom mirror frame

When we bought our house, the mirror over the bathroom vanity was huge…and in bad shape. I made a frame for it to cover up the edges that were losing their silver….but it eventually had to go.

We picked up a standard mirror at Ikea, with nothing fancy and no frame.

I decided that a basic half lap joint would be nice enough and wouldn’t attract as much trouble with humidity changes as a mitered joint would.

I milled up some maple, cut a rabbet in the back for the mirror, cut the half laps and as I was about to start varnishing it, I thought it looked a bit too plain. I decided at the last minute to drill through the half laps and glue in some mahogany dowels to give it some oomph.

The mirror itself is mounted into the rabbet with a bead of silicone caulk (to keep water from washing between the mirror and the wood) and then a piece of 1/8” hardboard with some brads into the frame keep it all nice and snug.

To mount the mirror, I have four screws in the wall that slide into slots in the back of the frame with blind ‘keyhole’ hardware over them. The mirror does not move without significant upward force.

A couple of notes on the pictures:
The first one shows how my wide angle shot bends the lines of the mirror a bit…I’d like the claim that I made the mirror with bowed sides and cut the mirror to fit, but no…it’s all just a rectangle.
In the second shot, the joint looks very strange. It looks like it’s full of woodfiller or something…it’s actually a pretty clean joint…not sure why the picture reflects it that way.

-- Ian - Life's a game, if you don't play, you can't win.