Sunday Project

 We've had this problem in our house. It was the late 90's every fixture craze of being gold. The nasty, tacky, shiny fake gold. Gosh, I can't even explain how much I hate that! Who would chose to put that in a home? Well apparently when our house was built in the early 2000's the previous owners decided it was an okay thing to have. I say yucky. But if that was (one of) my biggest complaint, I could handle it.

Old, nasty light & UGLY faucet! 

When we first moved in 2 years ago, we had to change a few light fixtures first because they were AWFUL!! Our main floor lights were definitely priority. We didn't need anything fancy, but we didn't want anything shiny chrome either. We went with some brushed nickel, and everything looked 100x better! 

The thing we did wait on was our bathrooms. There was nothing wrong with the lights and the faucets, and we wanted to replace much of the flooring in the house first, so we dealt with the ugly apartment style bathroom lights for a while. I can't even explain to you though how terrible our faucets were. They were nasty shiny chrome and the handles were the same, stupid shiny gold! Who combines those 2 awful things in 1 faucet? Yuck, yuck yuck! We finally decided it was time to switch that stuff out. Not some big home make-over project (we've got another project in the works, besides the babies room!), but just a swap. We went to the store and found great light fixtures for all 3 of our bathrooms and got new faucets too. What a difference those things make! I am shocked by how much brighter everything is! 

But then came my next project idea. We have the raw edge, basic mirrors in our bathrooms. Now, I really can't complain about them because they are huge and serve their purpose just fine, but they are definitely not the prettiest. I've been wanting to update them, but don't feel like buying new mirrors and then fixing the wall behind the mirrors if the new ones were different. That sounded like way to much work for me! So, I turned to trusty ole' Pinterest and found a great idea! I would put up tile around the mirror and, BAM, new looking beautiful mirror. I have to say, Jordan wasn't completely envisioning my plan and I'm pretty sure he thought I was going crazy. The guy at Home Depot thought I was some stupid housewife who saw this idea on HGTV and thought I could do it on my own. And I have to admit, I was a little skeptical myself. But I started with our half bathroom because if I royally screwed up, it was a small enough mirror that it wouldn't cost an arm and a leg to replace. 

The tile before

MOST amazing product! 

Jordan and I spent some time picking out the tile and of course, we picked out one of the most expensive ones. It was still only about $10 a sheet, but compared to some other ones, it was a bit more pricey. We found some awesome tile adhesive at Home Depot and bought a package of that and headed back home. This adhesive stuff is my favorite thing ever. You literally peel off the back side, stick it to the surface you are tiling (counter, backsplash, in my case a mirror) and then peel off the other side that has a different adhesive and stick the tile right onto it. Again, I was a bit skeptical, but it was soooo easy and worked out perfect for this project! I highly recommend this stuff, turns out its what my parents used on their backsplash in their kitchen! 

Up close of the adhesive sheet

I cut each tile out separately and chose not to get and grout, for many reasons. First, I've never grouted before. I wanted this to be a "me" project and not something that Jordan had to help me with, he has enough stuff to do around the house. Second, the example I found on pinterest didn't use grout and it looked fine. And third, how was the grout going to reflect in the mirror? The edges are exposed and you can see the back side of the tiles reflecting. 

So, here is my finished project! 

After cutting the adhesive paper, pulling the tiles off their mesh backing and sticking them all together, I think it looks pretty darn good! The whole thing only took about an hour to put together. We haven't hung it back up yet because we need mirror glue to stick it back up on the wall, with the bottom brackets still in place. 

I can't wait to do this with our other mirrors. I just have to find the right tile and go for it! It is so super easy and I think it will make such a difference in our room, along with the new lights and faucets of course! I really want to go show that Home Depot guy how silly he was for underestimating a lady on a mission!