Live Edge Mirror Project

Jessie’s determined to clean out our room and so we’re working on projects to make that space more comfortable. We’ve cleaned out a ton of stuff that got thrown in there before the wedding this summer and we’ve just never cleaned up.

In the bathroom, we ripped a medicine cabinet off the wall that we’ve hated since we moved in. We have a basic piece of mirror glass and we’re taking a piece of apple wood that came from a tree that died in our backyard and make a live edge border on the left and right side of the mirror.

The first step was taking a branch off this tree, and letting it sit inside for a couple of weeks to make sure it was nice and dry. I started trimming protrusions off the branch until it was smooth, relatively speaking. Then i build a sled and tried slicing planks off the branch with my band saw.

That was a disaster. The band saw I have has a dull blade apparently, and apple is a VERY hard wood. The saw blade deflected all over the place and I got nowhere near a cut through the board. It was straight enough for me to move over to the table saw and go from there though.

In the end I had a huge pile of scrap wood

And two decent boards to use

Tonight I took a piece of the scrap and put a light coat of polyurethane on it to see what it’ll look like if we decided to seal the whole piece. The color comes out a bit better with the polyurethane on there, and it’ll protect the whole thing since it’s going into the bathroom and there’s a lot of moisture there.