So I wanted to make a mirrored cabinet for my workshop that stood over the laundry sink/tub in there. I didn't need anything fancy, and wanted it roughly a foot deep to hold first aid supplies and maybe a number of hygiene items. Also, you might see, I wanted a dry rack built into the bottom over the sink. This is where I eat my lunch at the workshop and I hand wash my dishes there. They don't make mirrored vanity cabinets cheap it seems, and also they don't make them any deeper than 4.5 inches. There was no way what I wanted even partially existed for any reasonable price. So, I had to grab my scrap plywood and spend half a day making my own. Of course I selected the mirror (best dimensions to what I wanted at the cheapest price/decent quality I could find) and didn't make the cabinet until after it arrived. It arrived as I hoped and met the standards for what this was meant for: hanging up on little hooks on the wall like a picture. Something like this would make sense in your entryway or mud room, so you check your hair or something before heading out, appearance wise after it's hung the standard version in walnut looks fairly classy and would work with most interior designs, I'm sure the other colors would work as well. The frame this plasticy/particle board wood stuff and the surface you normally see is smooth and impermeable to water from that side. You can lean in and look real close and it looks like very well polished wood, but when you feel it you can tell there's plastic or polymer in the frame. Not bad for the price actually. The problem was the hook mounting hardware that was in my way... And what's this? Brown craft paper glued on the back? Not a problem if this going up in your office or a guest bedroom I guess, but this was going over a drainage tub that I filled with gallons of hot water every few days. I didn't want steam to condense in there over time and have microbial growth as a result. Using this mirror in a bathroom, or near a stove (not sure why you want to check your reflection while stirring a boiling pot of macaroni though...) this might be a pad choice. This mirror isn't marked as a bathroom mirror, so I'm not going to hold it against them at all. This was a excellent opportunity to take it apart like a child with mild ADHD who found dad's toolkit and has been left unsupervised for over 20 minutes. Not much has changed in the last 15 years in that aspect of me being a legal adult... This was also a excellent opportunity to evaluate the quality of the mirror behind it's appearance. The screws for the hanging hardware on the backside were tiny and I had to use the small screwdrivers to get them out. I'm glad they didn't use exotic screws with triangles or star shaped bits. It was standard Philips head, just the small size. The screws were a pain to get out, they were quite stiff and each one took a lot of torque to remove by hand. While annoying for me, I can say that these hooks are going to stay on and not fall off under normal circumstances for you. So this is a win for quality actually despite the fact my fingertips were notably red and sore from gripping the screwdriver so tightly. Using the most dangerous tool in my workshop: the utility knife, and a pair of needle nose pliers, I cut and ripped the paper away in a corner to find corrugated cardboard filler glued underneath it. It was actually glued on pretty well at the edges to the frame. After ripping out a tiny piece I discovered it was about 3/4 of a inch of stiff cheap cardboard and then the black glossy backside of the mirror. I cut a large square out along the inside of the frame and was able to easily remove the cardboard filler which was lightly glue to the back of the mirror with a few squiggly streaks of hot glue. I assume the purpose of the cardboard filler on the back, other than being a cheap material that's easy to work with, is to act as padding on the back side to prevent the mirror from break if hit from that side, which would only be useful during transport I guess. The brown paper overlay that was glued to the frame was very hard to peel off. Given that it was only a inch wide going around the perimeter at this point I didn't think that I needed to remove anymore at this point. I did peel off the corners to see how they jointed the frames and found a metal zigzaggy bracket holding it together. I'm no sure how it actually worked or how it may have been installed, but it looked fairly sturdy considering that this was the cheapest mirror that met the dimensions I wanted. I used some gorilla glue and almost half a dozen pneumatically driven 18 gauge 5/8 inch staples to mouth it to thin ¼ inch scrap plywood for my hinged door. I chose shorter staples to not go too deep and hit the mirror by accident. The sudden “FWAP!” of staples at 120 PSI hitting the plywood and into the back of the mirror frame did not crack it. (Whew!) So it's also durable in that regard. The mirror is decent. I give it a 4/5. I say that I feel at $40 this is a little too much money for what it is, but then again I couldn't find cheaper for something around 16 inches by 20 inches. This is a $35 or $30 mirror if you ask me, but that's perhaps a bit nit-picky. By the way, the dimensions of the glass mirror itself is 17 inches by 13 inches, the frame is 20 inches by 16 inches. The frame is 1-1/2 inches wide around the edges, and it's 1 inch deep if you take off the hanging hardware on the backside.
