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It sometimes amazes me what a simple switcharoo can do for a room…

This week’s “Thrift Store SCORE!” has a pretty big impact, without requiring much effort on our parts at all! Gotta love an easy project. (Well maybe every now and then…You know we love a good challenge!)

When I was taking room-by-room photos for our brand new house tour page I noticed something…I was in the half bath downstairs and, although we both know it needs some work given its ultra feminine and slightly country vibes (so not our style…), it occurred to me that we could start by simply getting rid of the mirror!

There’s nothing wrong with the mirror really – But the shape of it is a little “off” for our clean-lines home.

So off we went to Estate Specialist!

I’ll be honest…I wasn’t expecting to spend as much as we did. But when I started picking up mirrors, the price tags were in the $30’s. I adjusted my thinking and started the hunt for something in the $20’s instead to save at least a LITTLE moolah.

I finally found the PERFECT one – And of course, it didn’t have a price tag on it. But it had the right weight, the right clean lines and vintage-but-modern details we wanted, so I was ready to fork over the cash for it at the register.

It must have been our lucky day though because it was only $25! The perfect definition of a “Thrift Store SCORE!” – Our great find/deal really sunk in when we hopped on over to Lowe’s later that day for some paint supplies and happened to walk through the mirror aisle. Everything in the same size as our thrifted mirror was somewhere in the $50’s and $60’s. Gotta love that we paid half that price for a mirror with a lot more character then the brand new ones (and a great story to boot!).

So the first step in this oh-so-easy project was to unscrew the little caps that held the original mirror to the wall.

I didn’t take many good pictures of this project for some reason, but here’s an online image of the doodads I’m referring to:

So anyways, I simply unscrewed three of the four plastic anchors from the wall and gently eased the mirror off the last anchor before removing that one too. All gone!

Here are the two mirrors sitting on the floor of the bathroom – The old on the left and the NEW thrifted one on the right! Isn’t she a beaut?? 🙂 And it’s REALLY heavy…Makes me feel like it’s well-made for some reason.

I’m sure you can guess what comes next, given that all I needed to do was hang the new one like any other wall art…But I’ll be thorough and tell you anyway:

I held the new mirror up to the wall over the sink with my finger holding the mounting wire taut behind it.
When the mirror was where I wanted it, I simply let the finger that was holding the wire tight flick out until it was touching the wall – This is my scientific way of marking where the nail should go.
I called for John to come take the mirror for me since I was carefully staying still, keeping my finger where the nail should go (did I mention that that mirror is a heavy sucker?!)
And then grabbed a nail, put it just below where my finger was still marking the spot and hammered it into place!
Mirror went up on the wall – Et voila!

In our opinion, it adds character and warmth to the bathroom – Something it was lacking before. I find that frameless mirrors, while very subtle and appear to float, don’t add much to a room’s personality. I love the new mirror’s straight-edged shape and the detailing in the wooden frame itself.

Before:

And after!:

The bathroom is far from done, although this is a good step in the right direction. The plan is to paint the room a pale grey and then add mustardy yellow, white and darker grey accents. Sort of in this direction:

Hope we can find most of the new additions in a second-hand shop!

And yes, I’m contemplating painting the new frame white…I know it seems like murder to cover up the beautiful dark wood, but I think the white will REALLY bring out the details in the frame and will make it pop against the grey walls. Also brings it a little more into the modern age. What do you guys think?

Happy thrifting!

(Photo credit for plastic wall mount doodads: here; all images for Inspiration Board came from a Google image search)

Apparently I am a jewelry hoarder…I have an inordinate amount of colorful necklaces and earrings for just about every outfit (and then some!). To me, a great necklace and pair of earrings are like the cherry on top ~~of a sundae~~ of an ensemble.

If you remember, I’ve already found a way to wrangle in my necklaces using about $10 worth of supplies.

It was my mission this past weekend to do the same thing with my vast earring collection.

After a quick trip downtown to a thrift shop, I came away with all I needed:

An old (but rust-free) window screen – $2.00
A back-less wooden frame – $2.00

I also went out to Lowe’s and picked up a $20.00 staple gun, but I don’t really count that as part of the total for this project since it can be used for many many projects down the road…Let’s just say I used about a $1.00’s worth of that cost on this project.

My mom’s going to be jealous when she sees this – I bought the kind where you push on the FRONT of the gun to fire the staple. I think she’s had the same issues that I have with the old kind where you push on the back to fire the staple out the front end. It’s frustrating having to try not to rear the staple gun back too far when you fire it so that the staple actually catches on the material.

You can borrow it any time, mom 🙂

First thing I did was my always-scientific manner of getting measurements – i.e. stab the screen with scissors somewhere to start the cutting and then hold the frame up to the screen, eyeball it and start cutting out a rectangle about the size of the frame.

But, hey – It worked!

Granted, I had to do some trimming when I got the piece of screen out and placed inside the back of my frame…But it was pretty simple to cut it to fit perfectly. I found that you can even get super straight cuts just by following the line of tiny squares in the wire mesh.

Oh, and make sure you clean your wire mesh with alcohol before actually adhering it to the frame…Whether you bought a used or new screen, it’s good to give it a thorough wipe/pat down to keep your jewelry nice and sterile. Just look at all the gunk that came off on the paper towel!

After getting the screen cut to fit and all clean, I loaded my staple gun and gleefully shot a staple into the frame.

Alas, this happened…

(sorry the picture is so blurry…I was upset)

The force of the staple snapped the wood of the frame (which was pretty old…) and the staple didn’t even go all the way in!

So on to Plan B (which I didn’t really have since I was counting on my sparkly, new, state-of-the-art staple gun). When all else fails, use hot glue!

Out came my mini hot glue gun:

I should probably upgrade sometime soon to a regular size hot glue gun, but I’ve had this mini version for YEARS. Other then going through glue sticks quickly because they ARE in fact “mini”, its fabulous and gets the job done!

Happily, this new (unplanned) plan worked like a charm 🙂

I lifted the edge of the screen mesh, put a line of glue down on the backing lip of the frame and pushed the mesh down into the too-warm-for fingertips glue using a fork.

I also put a line of hot glue on top of the mesh that had been glued from beneath just to make sure it was really stuck. Yummy glue sandwich!

Sure, it’s not pretty from the back! But it looks clean from the front – So I am satisfied. And I trust that the hot glue is strong enough to last through use. All it needs to be able to hold is a feathery-light collection of beaded and metal earrings after all. Mini hot glue gun comes to the rescue yet again!

So up to the master bathroom we went! I decided to move the necklace-holding frame to the longer wall so that the two can be a pair. Miraculously, the frames were the EXACT same size – Still blows me away that that happened. It wasn’t intentional, but definitely a happy mistake.

So here they are together – One happy bling-y couple.

Not so sure about the black hanging wire seen through the wire mesh though…I may switch it out for clear fishing line. Or I might just drill through the frame and screw it into the wall. Don’t really like the fact that I am going to constantly have to straighten it when I move the earrings around. I’ll keep you posted!

UPDATE: I finally fixed the black wire and wobbling issue – Check out my solution here!

Some more details:

And in case you were wondering, this is about 1/8 of my full collection…It will be quite full when all is said and done. May need to make another framed organizer!