I picked up this darling mirror in my local town for £10. I saw it in a thrift shop window being fondled by a man wearing a rather short pair of shorts. Surely not, I thought to myself, that mirror wouldn’t suit him at all. He needs a mirror with army camouflage adorning every corner, not fake gilt. His fingers lingered for a moment longer before he took himself and his hot-pants off to the book department. It was at that moment that I wisped into the shop, lurched into the window and was making my way out the door with this mirror, having paid for it of course, before man in short shorts could flick through his first Andy McNab novel.

Now, I knew that once Robert saw a gilt mirror sitting in our house I would get the inevitable “Will that be going after the magazine shoot?”
To be honest it seems that everything I bought into the house in a rush in order to get ready for the photographer arriving was bought with my instinct firmly in place. I had to think super quickly about whether or not this item would look good in that corner or whether that piece of thrifty goodness really should be shizzled up a tad in order for it to make a positive difference.
This mirror was one of the items that needed shizzling up. At times of needed shizzle I reach for my trusty sample pots of Farrow & Ball. This time in the colour Bone.

And this is what happened to my faux gilt friend. It now looks rather nice sitting in the corner above the tallboy in our bedroom.

It’s unfortunate that you can’t tell from these pictures but I assure you that I didn’t blot out the whole of the mirror’s former look with the new coats of paint. I took an old brush and stabbed the new paint into the gilt, very small amounts at first. I didn’t want the mirrors edge to have a flat, matt look to it. I wanted to retain the texture that the gold and the blackness gave it while at the same time lightening the whole object up so it hung like a contemporary antique …..er…..thing!

Mmmmmmm, antique indeed. Ms. Menlove it cost you £10 and is as light as a feather. In fact it could very well be made from papier mache or plaster of paris!!!

Do I care? Not a jot and this is why its so much fun to experiment with inexpensive finds for the house. You can afford to purchase, give the item a makeover and discard in a few months time should the item not work out in the space you have given it. However, after well over a year in this particular spot my faux gilt mirror is still hanging strong.