Kae's Corner Design: I've been framed

Well I had another productive weekend, and I have to tell you, it feels good to actually cross things off my ever growing list of things to do. Before you think that this is regular occurrence for me, let me reassure you that is most definitely not. I have been talking about painting my living room and dining room walls for months now, and they are still the same beige they were when we moved in.

Anyway, over the weekend I framed the mirror in our guest bathroom. Let me tell you, it was so easy and very inexpensive, my favorite kind of DIY project. So even though there are about a million and one tutorials for this out there, I thought I would go ahead and make that one million and two. Before I started I read through tons of tutorials and picked out all the shortcuts I could find to make this as simple as possible. I'm a big fan of taking the easy way out.

First thing to do is measure and figure out how much trim you need to buy. Once you get that done, head to your local hardware store and pick up your supplies. Here's what you will need:

Baseboards or some sort of trim (preferably primed)

Liquid Nails

Caulk or spackling

miter saw or miter box

paint

In my case, all I needed was the liquid nails. Luckily the previous owners left 4 long pieces of baseboard in our garage. That was so nice of them!

My little guy wanted to help me measure, so he grabbed a toothbrush and climbed on the toilet...

Now onto the fun part, cutting your trim. This is where having a miter saw would be very handy, but that's for the fancy people. I just used a good ol' miter box. So not only did I get all my pieces cut out, but I got an awesome arm workout while I was at it. That, my friends, it what I call multitasking.

*This is where most people would paint the pieces, I skipped this step because I wasn't sure what color I wanted quite yet, and I was impatient and realized that I would have to wait for my paint to dry completely before I glued them to the wall.*

Next up, gluing. I started with the bottom piece so I could make sure it was straight. I'm a little paranoid and used a lot of liquid nails, so of course when I pushed it on a lot of it oozed out the sides. I just wiped it off with a paper towel and all was well.

Once the bottom was pretty dry, after about a half hour, I glued on the two side pieces. Some parts of the wood was slightly warped since it was in the hot garage all summer so the bottom right corner would not stay down. This is where my husband came in and saved the day by McGyvering the shower curtain rod as a holding mechanism. Genius I tell ya, pure genius!

And then, the same thing, when the sides were dry I glued on the top. After it was dry and not going anywhere I spackled the corners to fill in any gaps that I had. Most people would use caulk for this, but I didn't have caulk or a caulk gun, so Spackle worked just perfectly! Like I said, shortcuts only please. Finally came the paint. At first I wasn't sure what color I wanted to do, but once it was all up I decided I liked it white, so white it is! And there you have it, easy peasy!

Before: