Hanging A Round Mirror Over The Bed: a house log

It is been a dang long time since we have done anything in the guest room, which we scrambled to get ready for my mom’s stay over two years ago. Can you believe that was two years ago? Crazy. Anyway, we have consistently thought that the grabbed-it-that-day-in-a-panic mirror over the bed from Target could stand to be a little bigger since it blends into those dark walls so much and the reflected circle that it sports seems a little compact for that big bed under it (even if we beefed up the trim or brought in starburst-like details around it we worried the actual size of the mirror was still a little piddly).

And you know we are no strangers to tweaking things over the years (more on that here) so we kept our eyes peeled for a larger mirror that might work better. Yup, we have spent two years sort of passively (and sometimes actively) looking for a mirror. Is that some kind of record? We simply did not want to jump the gun and grab the wrong thing again. Then I saw this guy on Joss & Main (called The Charles Mirror if that helps anyone hunt it down) and boom. Enjoy at first sight. Everything from the bright white color (which ties into the curtains) and the lively bamboo shaped frame (which relates to the bamboo side table made from an old luggage rack) to the size (this baby’s three honking feet wide) was ideal for the room.

The only scary part was the price. It was $169 with free shipping. So we hemmed and hawed (we are used to spending around $60 on a mirror at Hobby Lobby, HomeGoods, or even finding one for $5 at a yard sale). Then we admitted to ourselves that we enjoyed the mirror, and it was exactly what we’d been looking for over the past 700 days. Most of all, we worried if we did not spring for it that we’d spend another two years looking for something else, so we pulled the mirror trigger.

The new guy certainly fills out that wall better and balances out the window on the left of that wall (the dark wall above the bed felt weirdly heavy next to such a light and bright window when it was sporting the darker & smaller mirror).

Here is a before shot from a similar angle so you can see what we mean. In person it was even more off-kilter looking (so much light flooded into the window but not much light was reflected by that compact round mirror). In person it felt like “HI I AM A WINDOW!!!” and “psst, I am a mirror” – so it is pleasant to have a new one that fills out the wall in a more compatible way.

As two fairly frugal folks, sometimes it is hard to decide when to splurge – and we have in fact received requests from you folks for a post on that, so let us dive into that for a hot second. Since 95% of the time we do things the low-cost way (shopping on craigslist and at thrift stores, cutting each others hair, cloth diapering, driving one car, DIYing as much as we can, etc) we like to remind ourselves that splurging every once in a while is ok too, especially for something that proves to be especially hard to find or is even more via most other retailers (most mirrors of this size are a lot more in fact, like this 3′ wide mirror that is on sale for $499 at Ballard!).

So I guess our answer to that common “when do you know when to splurge” question can be summed up by these few questions:

1. Do we have the cash to pay for this? (we pay off our credit card in full each month, so if we do not have the money on hand that purchase is a no-go)
2. Do we think we can find something that we like simply as much for less? (after two years of looking the answer was a resounding “NO!” – haha)
3. Have we checked craigslist, freecycle, and local thrift stores regularly to see if anything there pops up? (we did this every few weeks for months to no avail)
4. Can we build it? (even though we thought we might be able to Hands-on a similar looking frame with plenty of time/mitered cuts, it was hard to find any round mirror this large with a rim/frame that we could alter)
5. Is the item still a good value? (seeing other retailers selling mirrors of the same size for much more made us feel like this was not a bad price for something so detailed/large)
6. Have we saved money in other ways that make this purchase feel justified? (obviously if we had simply booked a vacation or spent a ton of money on something else we would have passed, but since we hadn’t, it felt pleasant to “treat ourselves” in the consistently excellent words of Tom Haverford…

But back to the mirror. Once once we got over our nervousness and ordered it, we were excited to get it up on the wall when it arrived. So imagine our surprise when it showed up without any hanging hardware on the back! It freaked us out for a good minute or two before we realized we could fix that little issue fairly easily.

Thankfully it had a pleasant thick wood frame back there, so we grabbed one of those packets of heavy duty metal hanging hooks that can be drilled in with two screws so they are extra sturdy (we found ours for $2 at JoAnn but they also sell them at Home Depot, etc). We screwed two screws into each of the two hooks, which we attached in the same spot on both sides so it would hang pleasant and straight. Then, ta-da, it was ready to hang.

John held it up on the wall and shifted it around with the headboard still on the bed while I stood back and said “an inch to the left, wait, a little higher!” and then after we marked the wall for the two heavy duty anchors and screws that we brought in to hold it up, we took out the headboard and the pillows so they would not be in the way while we got to work hanging the mirror.

Then we brought in back the headboard…

… and the pillows.

Cowabunga, dude. Come on folks. Let us bring back cowabunga.

So that is a little update in a room that we have not touched for two years. What are your rules for when to splurge? Do you ask yourself a ton of questions first or is it simply something that you go with your gut on? Sometimes I hate that we over-analyze everything, but in the end I think our bank account thanks us for it…