Diagonal Mirrors

There are plenty of big things left to do in our basement family room, like re-finish the media cabinet or recover the sectional, but I am not ready to tackle those yet. Instead, I have craved quick pick-me-up projects. You know the ones that take only minutes to complete, you have everything you need on hand, and when you are done you are grinning from ear to ear? With all the rainy days we have had lately, that’s the kind of project that puts a little sunshine in my day.

I completed this little pick-me up project in less than half an hour. It makes me smile every time I walk into the basement and since it involves mirrors, it literally reflects sunshine into the room. Plus, I had fun photographing the mirrors and capturing different parts of the room in the reflections.

I spy a DIY geometric rug ottoman…

I spy a game nook with a modern turquoise pedestal table, a ton of DIY pillows, and a DIY upholstered banquette…

I found these square decorative mirrors for $10 at Home Goods ages ago. I just grabbed them because I likes them but had nowhere to put them at the time. They sat in the garage for over a year (hence the layer of dust on the before picture). When I ran across them again a few days ago, I knew they were the perfect shade of turquoise for the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs between the future pirate playroom and family room, there is a small angled wall. It is directly opposite one of the angled window walls in the game nook. For greatest light reflection, I love hanging mirrors opposite windows.  (Please ignore the day bed which is temporarily sitting where the media center will be.)

Instead of hanging these mirrors straight, aka the boring way, I hung them on the diagonal. I stacked the frames vertically. Hanging them diagonally is much more interesting. Instead of using the hooks on the back, which were not in the right place to hang diagonally, I hung the mirrors with 3M picture hanging strips.

But, they still weren’t interesting enough. I wanted some sort of edge detail. Since the wall they are on is angled you can see the edges of the mirror from the family room and future playroom. The edges were the same turquoise, but only about a half-inch thick.

I used washi tape to add an interesting detail to the edges. I took the mirrors off the wall and carefully added a band of diagonal striped teal washi tape to the edges. The washi tape was slightly wider than the frame edge, so I lined the tape up flush with the front edge of the mirror. I made small snips into the over hanging tape at the back edge and folded it over onto the back of the frame. I re-mounted the mirrors on the wall.

Ah, better. I now have interesting mirrors hung diagonally on a diagonal wall and embellished on the edge with diagonal stripe washi tape. Hooray for diagonals and simple projects!

I finished these up quick and then spent the afternoon playing outside and doing silly things with my son.