Last week I was on a mission to get our new family photos up on the walls. One wall is in our dining room with an oversized mirror in a black frame.
With so much “lightness” going on in the white/grey/silver around it, the heavy black mirror just felt a little clunky. I’m really enjoying creating a clean, bright background to showcase my furniture and treasures. This was distracting a bit from it.
So, I set about brightening it up with some silver paint.
I originally thought that I would do silver leaf, but it turns out that silver leaf is pretty expensive to do on such a large space. The “imitation” silver leaf really looked imitation to me, so I decided to paint it instead for a similar effect.
I lightly brushed on a coat and stepped back. I decided that too much black was showing through and did a second coat. At that point, Jason walked by, and in a rare moment of taking in only of my projects said “that looks nice; are you going to leave it like that?”. So I did. I was careful to follow the mitered corners and let a little black show through for the look that I wanted.
Note, I don’t worry about taping when I paint mirrors. I find it easier to clean off when the paint dries with a razor blade.
The light over the dining table will eventually find itself a new home, so that heavy, dark look will soon be gone. What do you think of the silver… better or worse?
