Mirror Mirror by the Road - an OMNA Project

Mirror Mirror by the Road

How would you like to come on Home?

Some weeks ago, I was lucky enough to spot a lovely, big mirror - languishing by the roadside; unbelievably discarded by its previous owners.  It was big, It had fully wooden hand-carved frame, and It was looking for a new home - MINE!

Discarded Mirror I dragged home (CH0301)

This is an OMNA (Old Made New Again) story and how it is done.

Unfortunately for this rescued mirror, it did not find favour in my partner's eyes - so it could not get past our front door.  For the last couple of weeks, it has been trying hard to grace our porch, hoping for a home entrance in the future.  I knew I had to try to get it past the front door with, hopefully, some acceptable transformation ... This is the story of how Mirror-Mirror came in to our home.




Firstly I was worked on making some glass beads cherry blossoms.  The branches I already had - and they had been collecting cobwebs for some time.  I had an idea in my head, as I worked on the cherry blossoms that soon included Mirror-Mirror.

Mirror Details before Transformation

Detail Carving on Mirror

Detail Carving on Top of Mirror

 As you can see, the hand carving on the mirror is really quite lovely.  Many of you might even feel, as part of me does, that I could have left the mirror as is - and sneak it into the house.  What seems like scratches on the mirror are just water droplets.  Thankfully, the mirror was fully intact when I picked it up.

Preparation & Transformation of Mirror-Mirror

Damage on the Mirror Frame

However there was some damage at the top right of the mirror frame.  A nail was protruding out and the head of the nail is not visible anywhere.  Thankfully, I had just gotten my first Dremel gadget - a Dremel Stylus Cordless.  I hoped that it would have something there that could help me with getting rid of the nail cleanly and thankfully I was right.


Using the Dremel Cut-off Wheel #409, I cut off the nail cleanly and smoothly.  As it was my virgin trial with the Dremel Stylus, it was all a bit frightening and exciting. Yay!

Nail Gone!  Thanks to Dremel Cut-off Wheel

The Dremel Sanding Band #430 was used to sand down the rough edges of the broken wooden frame.

Dremel Sanding Bank #430

Next thing was to clean up the mirror frame.  As it is deeply hand carved, there were many deep grooves that had to be cleaned before I could spray paint it.  I cleaned it with a tooth-brush and water and then, when it was dried, I cleaned it once more with the Dremel Bristle Brush #403.

That might have seemed a bit over-kill but you will be surprised, once dried, how much dust and dirt seems to be left in the grooves despite tooth-brushing it with water.  The Dremel Bristle Brush #403 did the final job of getting those leftover bits out of the grooves.

Make sure that surround area is going to be protected before spray-painting.  Also using masking tape and newspapers, carefully cover up the mirror, ensuring that the mirror is cleanly masked while leaving every bit of the frame surround unmasked and ready for the paint.

Protect and Mask before Painting

I was hoping to spray paint the frame white. I had a bottle of "Appliance White" but it was years old - at least 10.  The good & unexpected feature of this spray bottle was that it allowed, with a twist of a button, horizontal spraying.  Which was good as I was having difficulty thinking how I could vertically spray and still protect the background area.  Our house does not really have space for that.

Appliance White Spray Paint for Mirror Frame

Due to the age of the spray paint, it had only done half the job before it gave up the ghost.  Despite repeated attempts at cleaning the nozzle and cap, it just stopped spraying.  Thankfully I had another can in "Aluminium Silver".  I could not rush out and try to buy another matching paint color and I wanted to get the job done.  So I brazened it out and decided to finish the job with "Aluminium Silver" - hoping that somehow it might add to the mirror rather than be a disaster.

Good thing the "Aluminium Silver" spray paint worked well despite its similar age and the result was rather more pleasing than glaring.  Now instead of my initial plan of having a white frame, I have a silvery frame with tinge of white.

Painted Mirror Frame

It is not very clear in the following photo, but I did a final protective waxing on the mirror frame using Gold Metallic Wax.  This is only on some raised parts of the mirror frame.

Gold Metallic Waxing

Here are some final shots of the OMNA (Old Made New Again) Mirror-Mirror.  As you can see, my beaded cherry blossoms go together with the transformed mirror.  And yay! - finally, Mirror-Mirror has been granted entrance into our home.  My partner is now happy with it :D

OMNA - Old Made New Again Mirror

Have you had a recent or favourite OMNA (Old Made New Again) project?  Would love to hear about yours or even what you thought of my first OMAN project for 2013.  Thanks for dropping by.

Namaste and may your mirror reflect only goods things back at you.

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SG: What is OMNA?
Ans: Old Made New Again
SG: Where did that term come from?
Ans: I made it up one late night in Jan 2013 :D