Mirror Frame

So while prepping the downstairs bathroom for paint, I chipped part of the mirror taking it off the wall. Oops...  It was attached to the wall using those round glue patches and was not a job for one person, but I
was determined to do it myself and failed.
Anyways, to preserve the mirror we decided to make a frame for it that would cover up the broken corner. Here are the results.

We wanted a wide frame so I ended up using some 1x4 pieces of whitewood board from Lowes.  They were probably about 4 bucks a piece for the 2 8' sections so minimal damage there.  It was truly a bitch though to find 2 straight enough pieces to use.  I think I looked at 50 sections before finding two that would work.

Anyways, length was cut based on a 1/2"x1/4" route.  Mirror is 24x36 so the long sides of the board ended up being 42" and 30".  I figured the deeper the route, the more the chip is hidden.  Placed the boards out here so I could figure out how big of a corner piece I'd need to make.



Routing went well thanks to the table router that a friend let me borrow.  Had to make two passes to get the 1/2" depth.
Used a 1/2" straight bit instead of a rabbit.
Only rabbit in the set I had was 1/4".


Gluing this guy was pretty tricky thanks to the POS miter box I used to cut it.  The 45s weren't perfect which meant I had to sand which meant the corners weren't going to be perfect 90 degree angles.















This corner clamp was pretty awesome and made setting the corners much easier.  I had to mess around with the last few corners to get everything to fit right.  Some spacers or shims would have been a good idea.  It was almost not big enough for the 1x3 though.  I'll have to try and find a larger one somewhere.

Since the mirror is pretty heavy, I wanted to make sure the frame would be plenty strong at the corners to support the weight.  I wasn't liking the idea of nailing or screwing the corners because of the thickness of the wood and the length of screw that would be needed.
Ended up using a 1" drill bit to make a hole at each corner, then cutting a 1" dowel rod down to size and gluing it in there.  This should give the glue a lot more surface area to hold the corners together.








Now for the entire purpose of the build;  to cover the broken corner.  I was hoping the triangle left over at the end of each board would be enough to cover it up, but there was still some of the break exposed.  There were 4 ends due to using two boards, so I went with a sort of jagged design where I smashed them together.
Each corner piece was routed down a 1/4" so that it could sit flush with the front of the frame.

The corner pieces would not be weight bearing, so I wasn't to worried about clamping them in.  Just wanted to make sure it was as flush as possible on the top so that I'd have to do as little sanding as possible later.


Here is the 90% finished product.  Need to sand a little then send it to paint.

not sure I'm sold on the angle pieces yet, but we'll see how it looks after sanding and paint.

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions.

RF