It’s easy to take for granted certain luxuries. Electricity, clean water, indoor plumbing, HVAC, etc. But there are certain modern amenities that you don’t realize you miss until they’re gone. Like a bathroom mirror.
The frame matches the vanity!
I’ve never made a picture frame before. And I’m 100% certain this is not the way to frame a picture. That’s what miters are for. But mirrors are heavier than pictures and the frame needed to be stronger than a simple miter. I guess I could have splined the mitres, but that is power tool claptrap. So I went with lap joints, reinforced with pegs to match the vanity drawbores.
New phone, new camera.
White Oak is difficult enough to work with hand tools when it’s kiln dried. But imagine cutting 8 linear feet of rabbets with a moving fillister plane and a mild hangover. It’s a freaking nightmare. But with perseverance, you can turn this:
Mildly case-hardened, but all in all not too bad.
Into this:
Simple enough glue-up.
Attaching the mirror was a bit of a head-scratcher. My solution was to use caulk that dries clear and just schmoo the thing in place. Clear-drying caulk is a veritable miracle, btw. But it requires a small bit of faith because it goes on white.
Cork pads are probably in the wrong place, but they cover the pegs on the back side.
That’s just one of two mirrors needed. So, learning from the process, I’ll cut the corner joinery first and the rabbet second. I think.
Or maybe I’ll just buy a table saw with a dado stack.
JPG
The Apartment Woodworker 
I think the norm is something like brads driven into the rabbit to pin the mirror in place, or glue blocks, and to rely on a backing to give support and protect the glass?
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So, basically a bunch of just as makeshift solutions as caulking it in?
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Pretty much, though if the mirror ever breaks, that caulking might be a pain to redo.
For frames where replacing the contents wasn’t supposed to be traumatic (like picture frames), they have specialised hardware (which is a very fancy way to describe some very simple things). I’ve seen a second mitred frame placed inside the rabbit in some very fancy frames as well but that looks more trouble than it’s worth to be honest.
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That’s a good point. If the mirror ever breaks I will have quite the ordeal.
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Well, it’ll be awkward but it’s doable and you’re not *supposed* to be doing it anyway, it’s in case of a catastrophic failure 🙂
Now if it was a picture frame, that caulk would have been a bad choice. Here, erra, it’s grand.
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Look for glazing push points. Most hardware stores have ‘em.
With a mirror, a piece of blue tape on the back will avoid scratches of the mirror backing.
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