My mom has been looking for art to hang on the fence in her backyard for years; she collects cool stuff and puts it on the fence, and it’s always so fun to see what her newest additions are when I go visit my parents. Last week she was in town visiting us and spotted an old mirror in our basement that I had picked up at a garage sale; she immediately fell in love with it and asked if she could have it for her fence. I said of course, and we looked through my paint collection to find a fun color. We settled on bright yellow, and the mirror makeover turned out absolutely gorgeous. All you need to add a fun pop of color to your yard is an old mirror and some brightly-colored spray paint!
DIY Mirror Makeover
- 30 minutes (time spent doing stuff)
- 2 hours (time spent waiting around)
- 2 and a half hours (total project time)
Tools
- scrub brush
- cordless drill (for hanging the mirror)
Materials
- an old mirror
- spray paint (I used Krylon Colormaster in Sun Yellow gloss)
- glass cleaner
- dish soap
BTW, this Fish Foam stuff is my favorite window and glass cleaner. They didn’t sponsor this project or anything, I just really love it! They sent me some of their product to try out a few years ago, and I’ve been using it ever since! It gets your windows super clean and it’s the only thing I’ve ever found that is totally streak-free.
Instructions
Start by cleaning the mirror and frame. You can see how gross the glass on this mirror was, so I figured the frame was probably pretty gross too, even if it wasn’t as obvious.
If you can, remove the glass from the frame and clean it separately using a glass cleaner. To clean the frame, I used dish soap and a scrub brush to get in all the nooks and crannies.
Once the frame was clean, I dried it off and took it outside to spray paint it. I started with a really light coat of spray paint. This makes a nice “base” of paint for the additional coats to stick to. I could have used a primer for the first coat, but most spray paint I use is paint and primer in one, so it’s just fewer steps to do it this way!
You can see the first coat is kind of splotchy, but that’s ok! Just make sure there’s a light coat of color everywhere, then set the frame aside to dry for at least half an hour.
Once it’s dry, do a second coat. The second coat should go on much smoother and the color should start to appear more even. Continue adding more coats, letting it dry at least half an hour between each coat, until it looks the way you want it to. Don’t forget the back! I used two coats on the back and three coats on the front.
Then I drove a screw into the fence to hang it; I love how bright yellow it is!
I didn’t actually finish this project in time for my mom to take the mirror home with her, so for now it’s adding a bright pop of color to our back yard instead. But once I find a box big enough, I’ll ship it to her so she can hang it on her fence with all of her other fun art!
Do you have art on your fence? We don’t, but I’m kinda liking this mirror, so maybe we’ll start a fence art tradition too!
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