Friday, April 6, 2012

Bathroom Redo Part 2 (Rehanging the mirror)

 You've all seen the great builder's grade mirror transformations all over the internet, right?  I've wanted to do that for YEARS in all my bathrooms.  We have those ugly just attached by a little plastic clip, no frame mirrors in all 3 bathrooms.  I HATE them.  I saw a mirror transformation with trim on HGTV a long time ago and insisted that one day I would do that.  I just needed to figure out how.  I had those pesky clips to worry about!

When I installed the new light fixture in the bathroom it hung down so that it overlapped the mirror.  I didn't like that.  I also didn't like that I couldn't fit any trim around the mirror to frame it.  So the decision was made to put the mirror down as far as it could go, on the lip of the backsplash.

Off to Home Depot I went to find some mirror adhesive.  The only adhesive they had was Liquid Nails.  I read the back of the can which informed me that the adhesive was meant to be used in conjuction with fasteners such as the clips or a channel.  Yep, not what I was looking for.

Off to Lowe's!  They had the same Liquid Nails and the two nice employees who tried to help were stumped.  One gal handed me something and said it would work.  It specifically said it was not to be used on mirrors.  No dice.  Then in a small box up on the highest shelf I saw 3 cans of Sikabond.  I grabbed one and started reading.  It looked like a winner!  (and previous Google searches suggested this was the best adhesive to use for the purpose I was looking for)  As you can see in the picture above there is no nozzle on this bottle.  Yeah, none of the 3 bottles had one.  Luckily I didn't really need one since I wasn't trying to be precise and make pretty caulk lines and the nice gal that handed me the wrong product earlier felt bad about the lack of nozzle so she marked it down to $5 instead of the $10 it was listed at.  Score!

Hanging the mirror was a two man job.  So I had to wait until the hubs had a free moment to help.  He's a busy man......I got impatient.  Finally he had time to help!!!  I loaded my Sikabond up in the caulk gun and man that stuff is thick!!!  We have a medium duty caulk gun and it had trouble with that stuff!!  Hubby started off holding the mirror while I applied the adhesive, but my hand got tired REAL quick and we had to trade jobs.  Here you can see the lovely caulk job we did!  Luckily no one (but you) will ever see that!!!

We pressed that sucker up against the wall (check out that new paint color!) and pressed and pressed and pressed!  We grabbed a tension shower curtain rod to help brace the mirror and added some tape along the top for extra hold.  The cure time listed on the package said 5 to 8 days.  I kept it up for 7 just to be sure.  I didn't want that thing to come crashing down!! It was a long 7 days.  I have been SO SO SO antsy to get back in that bathroom!

At this point I had already patched the walls, painted, installed a new light fixture, towel holder, toilet paper holder, scraped all the old caulk out of the shower, recaulked, and scrubbed it shiny! I just wanted out of the hall bathroom!  But I wasn't willing to steam up that room while the adhesive was setting, so I had to wait some more..........




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