our redone oversized craftsman style oak mirror

I gramed this photo the other day, all mysterious like...but hey with no filter...so that counts for some artistic beauty achieved right?

Anyway, this is what I was working on.

Our (redone) oversized craftsman style oak mirror.

This is a legit mirror. It's huge! My kids (and maybe myself) love looking at our reflections, so the mirror mirror on the wall should reflect (funny funny pun) that.

I did a lot of googling for "old windows" and then narrowed my search to "old new york windows" to get my inspiration. At first I wanted something way more grand with lots of detail and elegance , but I also really believe that simple is sometimes the most beautiful. And when I found the oak with it's ridiculous grain, I knew the simple craftsman style would be the best for our home.

And the shelf along the bottom has become a fantastic resting spot for legos and various food items like a half eaten taquito that Rad left. For later of course. 

As mentioned in this post, for the most part I'm not going to be documenting any stellar tutorials for projects around the house. Really though, is was super simple. This is what the mirror looked liked before, well it's actually just the corner of it because it's the only picture I can find.

so we just ripped the old molding off and reframed it.

The previous mirror was one of our first DIY attempts and the work was kind of shoddy. We really knew nothing back then about pretty much anything handy. Because the molding was so detailed, sanding it would have been impossible and I knew with how dark our walls are, staining it was the route we felt best about. 

So to reframe it we used

1 mirror that I found at Habitat's Restore years ago.

1 sheet of plywood

2 1X4X6 foot oak planks

2 1X4X4 foot oak planks

4 pieces of rounded oak quarter round

and 4 swooped (curved inward...I'm honestly not sure what the correct name is) pieces of oak quarter round.

^^^^here's the curved/swooped piece^^^

^^^the rounded quarter round^^^

Now that we have a miter saw and nail gun the assembly was smooth and pretty pain free. 

The mirror was already attached to the plywood from it's previous version so we just did a combo on wood glue, clamping and some finishing nails to make it all secure.

We wanted the wood to look as raw/natural as possible so we used Rustoleum's Golden Pecan stain and didn't seal it. 

We used these to hang it and they were super easy and totally awesome. 

Since it is HUGE we really really really knew it had to be absolutely secure so we used 3 of them. I think we might need to take the wall with us if we ever move it. 

And just so you can get an idea of where it is in our house...

It's pretty much the first thing you see when you walk in.

"Oh heeeyyyy there, good lookin. How you doin?"

PS I have got to learn how to shoot this room in manual because I swear our walls are not as blue as they look. The reflection of the back wall in the top pic is the most true to color shot.