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hespath23

Acid Wash Mirror

I wanted something large to hang over our dining room table and loved the look of an acid washed I saw at Arhaus; I did not love the price tag, so I of course decided to have my hand at DIYing one. The only thing I had to buy was the mirror. I ordered one from Bed, Bath & Beyond that was on sale for President's Day.


This project did not go as planned AT ALL. The first step is removing the back shatter-proof film and applying paint stripper. All of the work for this project is done on the back of the mirror.




The paint stripper was supposed to "morph" in a few hours, a few hours passed and nothing happened. I decided to leave it overnight and check again in the morning. Morning came and parts of the mirror morphed essentially turning black and wrinkling up but the majority of the mirror still looked unchanged so I left it for 24 more hours. By then the majority had morphed, so I scraped the paint off with a putty knife, careful not to scrape the mirror. There were still a couple small spots that didn't morph and I couldn't get the paint off but it didn't show through the mirror so I figured it was okay. My mom was staying over for a few days and the amount of times I said morph to her, had me thinking I was a kid playing Power Rangers again.




Next, I moved the mirror outside and filled a spray bottle with half bleach and half water. I sprayed the mirror with the mixture from different heights to make different sized droplets; this was supposed to take 10 minutes and it ended up taking 2 days. Halfway through the first day, I ended up ditching the water in the mixture and used pure bleach once I did that you could see the reflective part start to peel off and darken instantly. Careful you don't use too much bleach because once the reflective part is gone, IT IS GONE. I continuously flipped the mirror back and forth to see how the front side was looking. Once I was satisfied, I moved the mirror back indoors for painting. Below is what the mirror looked like before I moved it back in to paint.




Painting is completely optional but I had a look I wanted to go for based off the Arhaus mirror I saw. I used gold, black and brown paint and applied it with a sponge to the back of the mirror. I let that dry and then hung it up. Overall, this was an extremely challenging DIY because nothing went according to plan but it was very easy and something anyone could do to achieve the acid washed look for less, just bring your patience.



Links:



Paint Colors:


Paint stripper: https://amzn.to/3vbyyYE


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