French Door Mirror

2010-01-01T16:13:00.000-08:00

This is my submission for the....

...party!
I curb-shopped a set of french doors from my neighborhood. They weighed 40 pounds each! I'm sure I looked pretty amusing and slightly crazy cramming these puppies into the back of my VW Beetle. I was so triumphant! I got them home and stood them up in my garage and.......stared at them. Um??.......I knew I wanted to do something with them but had no idea what.
SO, there they sat for a couple months until one day it just hit me!
Here's what I came up with. Sorry about some of the pictures. A photographer I am not.At some point in this poor guy's life he was painted a metalic silver and had beer bottle caps nailed to him. All over one side. It took me forever to pry them off!

Rusty beer bottle caps. Strange.

Here's his twin sitting in the garage...

There weren't individual panes. It was actually one big piece of glass with a wood "frame" overlay. Which actually worked out much better for me. I just pried the wood off on one side.

Back side, with the wood overlay removed.

This is the pretty side. The side people will see. No beer bottle caps on this side. (Thank goodness!)

I taped off the pretty side for painting the wood.

I removed the hinges and a little lock someone had installed at the top.

I used Design Master in Walnut Wood.

One coat down....4 more to go! :)

All done painting. About 5 coats and 3 cans of paint later.

I wanted the clear glass to be a mirror instead. After researching my options I chose to go with a reflective "mirror like" spray paint made by Krylon. It's called Looking Glass.
What I didn't know was there's very few stores that carry it!

When I say "very few" what I really mean is, that I ended up driving from Tampa to Ocala for this spray paint. Any of you not familiar with the west coast of Florida, that's approximately 100 miles. Yes, I know, my best friend said I was crazy too.

I REALLY wanted that spray paint.

Side Note: Hobby Lobby in Ocala is VERY IMPRESSIVE! Very, very much worth the drive!!

The Looking Glass spray paint is crazy really because you spray it on the backside of the glass and it turns the front into a mirror. Now...how does the spray paint know which side is which? I mean, really? ;)
Well, here it is after the mirror spray paint. I was pretty pleased with the way the "mirror" came out. I couldn't really practice too much with the paint before I applied it because it's $10 a can and only 6 oz per can. That, combined with the recommended application of 5 coats....well, I didn't have too much to spare.

I attached some fancy hooks. Also from the totally awesome Ocala Hobby Lobby.

....and a fancy piece on the top...which was white, so I spray painted it the walnut color. It wasn't quite dark enough, so I misted a layer of Rustoleum Canyon Black over the top.

I think it came out really cute.

Reflective paint works very well. :)

Well....that's my project. :)

Four Flowers

French Door Mirror