Painting the mirror frame

We have a dark wood wardrobe which I've been wanting to paint since we've moved into our new house. At first I didn't even want to have it in the house. It is just way too dark for the English sized bedrooms. In Switzerland we had a bigger bedroom in which we had all dark furniture. Bed with bigger headboard, two sets of drawers this wardrobe plus another single and this mirror too. Now it just doesn't go with the house anymore. 

Andre did put the wardrobe in the spare room again after we moved in here. He's getting super fast at building ikea furniture now. It's FULL of my clothes now so I can't do without it now that it's there! So I bought paint right after moving in to paint it all white.

As a practice run I decided to first paint the mirror frame white and see how that turns out.

Here's the mirror in our room before

See, it doesn't do anything for the room. I loved the dark furniture but it doesn't work here. (That's not the Swiss bed, it wouldn't have fit. We sold it in Switzerland.)

So I dragged it into the spare room which is nice and empty. An old shower curtain covered the carpet plus newspaper just in case.

Here's the tools you'll need to do something like this

masking tape (and newspaper), sanding block or fine sandpaper, white spirits (and cloth), primer, paint and brush. A clean brush to start with. Mine was clean. This was taken half way through painting when I thought maybe someone would want to do this too and want to see what I used.

Cover the mirror with newspaper and tape it down with masking tape. Make sure that the masking tape is absolutely right up against the frame so you don't get paint on the mirror. 

Sand it down with fine sandpaper. I used the block you see above to sand with. I only did some light sanding as this was pretty smooth, but you still need to sand some to get the paint to stick. Wipe down with a cloth with white spirits.

Apply a primer. The tin said to let it dry for 4 hours so I left it and went to gym.

And then just apply the paint. Pretty straight forward. I had to apply a second coat of paint as it wasn't quite even and the dark wood was still showing through in places. After the second coat it looked really pretty and shiny white. Andre approved and he also thinks it looks much better in our room now.

Oh, there's the wardrobe in the back ground. You're next buddy!

Paint tin said 16 hours to dry. Then put it on it's side on newspaper and check the bottom. The tin didn't say to do this and usually I will just be so excited to get it in the room to see what it looks like, but luckily I wasn't myself at that moment and checked. It was still wet where it was stuck to the newspaper. It dried quickly but I left it like that all day. On it's side. I certainly didn't want white paint on the carpet.

Before and after.

 So much lighter and brighter! Still lots to do in our bedroom to make it nice. I'll show you. It will take time. Going to try curtain shopping again this weekend!

I wanted to start the wardrobe today. I was going to start on the drawers inside it, but I couldn't get them out... Andre fixed them so they wouldn't come out all the way. He'll have to help me get them out. I'll show you pictures once that's done. Hopefully by the end of next week.

It's half term coming up next week and I've got some cupcake classes with the kids. Some sweet fun! Will show you some pictures of that too end of next week.