Monday, February 4, 2008

Mirror, Mirror, On the... Floor

As I've mentioned, I have a deep love for my closets. I miss having a walk-in closet and have to make do with the small closets in our old house. I aspire to have an airy, girly dressing room that has room for a vanity, chaise and lots of room to play dress up and experiment with my clothes.



But, no such luck, at least not at the moment. I didn't even have a mirror, other than our medicine cabinet mirrors. I couldn't fully see myself until I got to work. And after an incident with a dress of questionable length, I decided I needed to find a full length mirror.



The problem is that most decent floor mirrors are pretty expensive - from $100 - $500 dollars. The other option was a really cheap mirror that mounted on a door. And I didn't want to put a mirror on the door, so that option was out.

Then I decided to make a three panel mirror. I'd seen the folks making 3 panel screens on several HGTV shows and figured that this couldn't be that different. This weekend, we finally got around to making it and it actually was pretty easy.

I decided to use the really inexpensive mirrors ($5 each), MDF and some pretty hinges we already had. We had the MDF cut at the store to have 6" above and below the mirrors, with 3" on either side. The mirrors are 4 feet tall so the total mirror is 5 feet tall. You could make this taller if you wish, of course.

I then staple-gunned the fabric to the panels. The fabric is actually a twin sheet set. It was only $5 on sale. I just cut the flat sheet in half for two of the panels and then used the fitted sheet for the last one. You can click on the image to enlarge.



Once the panels were covered (staple the short ends first then the sides, pulling tightly to get the fabric very taut), we hinged them together using three hinges on each side.



Then we screwed on the mirrors. I may actually paint the mirror edging to be brown which will tie in with the rest of the room and cover the screws. The entire mirror cost about $45 dollars and took only a few hours. If you are going to make this, make sure you assemble it in the room where it goes or have someone help you carry it. It's pretty heavy.

More metamorphosis projects to follow!

1 comment:

Danielle said...

How very crafty! I love the 3 way mirror. I have a giant antique mirror in my bedroom that doesn't fit in my closet, but it's great nonetheless. On a really sunny day, I'm sure I can burn the neighbor's house down if I just set the angle correctly.