Creating an Outdoor Mirrored Wall From Vintage and Antiques Mirrors

I’m in the middle of a Deck Refresh. Just muddling through task after task to get the deck summer ready. I will say this is my happy place. I love our home. What we’ve managed to accomplish in this small house and how we’ve managed to take a builder house and make it live large with no compromises is astonishing to me. OK there have been lot’s of compromises, but I love it just the same. But the deck is the place where I decompress, get my exercise, read, and most of all dream!!!

So, besides getting the gardens ready which includes many, many trips to the nurseries for annuals to fill all the containers, potting soil, and all the stuff required to make a lovely garden, I’ve also been tackling small projects to make everything deck ready.

A couple of weeks ago a started with a mirror I had purchased on a wandering trip to Plattsmouth NE. You can read about that here In Search of Antiques.

This antique was very dirty and had a very dark brown stain. It was gross! But the mirror was in good shape had nice 1890’s applied carving on it with only a couple of small areas that needed work. It was all wood, no plaster or composite. Besides that, it had a nice shape and a beautiful beveled mirror. I knew it would be perfect for my mirrored wall on the deck. After doing a bit of negotiating I got this mirror for only 45.00.

I have had a mirrored wall on the deck for about 8-10 years. I got this idea because I had a big blank wall and I wanted the wall to reflect as much of the garden as possible.

Our deck is not waterproof but it is somewhat protected with a pergola above. This is an area of the deck that has a marble serving shelf that I created with corbels that my dad and I fabricated years ago. There have been many mirrors on this wall over the years because they are outside and well, weather does happen! I’ve lost mirrors to hail and wind and last year the large center mirror created a spectacular crash that not only broke the mirror but also the frame. For this reason I never spend a lot of money on these mirrors, but it is so fun thrifting for mirrors and if you go into it with an easy come easy go attitude you won’t be devastated if one should break. I will say that this particular mirror turned out so great that I will take extra care to not let it break! I hope.

I brought the mirror up to the deck and started by roughly sanding and repairing a couple of areas in the carving that were missing, the corners had also separated and needed to be filled. I really should have glued these corners and put some clamps on it but frankly I was too excited to see the completed project, or maybe just to lazy!

This is where I needed to create a swirl from putty to match the rest of the carved molding

I simply used wood putty and molded it to the appropriate shape to match the other parts of the molding and sanded those areas very carefully. I then sanded the rest of the mirror to give it some “tooth” and applied 2 coats of Amy Howard Chalk Paint in Bauhaus Buff lightly sanding between each coat. By the time I got done with the first coat I was ready to start on the second coat. This is the beauty of chalk paint. It dries really fast. When the second coat was dry I just very lightly sanded it to bring out the highlights of the carving. Done easy peasy! Took me start to finish maybe 1 hour. Maybe.

I managed to pick up another mirror at the Restore Store the other day. Though this one was not old it was only $22.00 and I liked the very beefy frame.

I know you’re probably thinking why did she paint that! It was in pretty great shape with the exception of one small ding but way to fussy formal for me and besides I was putting it outside. I found on this one I basically just needed to pounce the paint into it rather than laying the paint on. I was definitely not thorough in my coverage, I let it dry and another light sanding and it was done.

Then there was this round convex glass mirror I had bought at the Bombay Co years ago. Remember them? I needed one last mirror to finish this wall up for the year, it was black with a gold accent so it got the same treatment.

Here is the finished wall.

Early this afternoon I was watering the plants in the front yard I discovered the peony’s and I actually gasped. I have never done an arrangement with my peony’s before. OMG I am in love, the bridal veil was also blooming so I snipped some of that and then this purple spikey stuff I cut some of that too. I grabbed a pewter pitcher and had a hey day playing with my blooms!