Craftsman Mirror Frame
3 January 2009

There is a lot to be said for a project that can be finished in a day. I'm not expert in furniture styles - I think this would be considered Craftsman style. It is red oak with a shellac finish - toned with a water soluable dye (Transfast brand, IIRC) that also appears to be alcohol soluble.



To keep things simple, none of the trim requires any mitering.  The middle trim piece may appear to be molding applied to the frame and mitered around the corners. Instead, it is a single piece sandwiched between the surrounding pieces. To ensure the vertical pieces (stiles) have consistent grain, the frame was assembled as a single piece and then cut before inserting the middle trim:



To secure the mirror in the frame, I drilled some large holes in the rear of the frame and used a small screw with a fender washer.



For mounting on the wall - I generally dislike typical mounting methods. I find many of them difficult to use. In addition, since this is a heavy frame, I wanted to be sure I could use screws in studs to mount the frame - without worrying about exactly where I placed the mounting hardware on the frame. For this reason, I put a mounting channel across most of the top rail of the frame. I undercut the top of the channel with a hand chisel, to ensure the mirror cannot easily slide off the mounting screws.