Mirror and Coat Rack

This Entry Way Mirror project is one of my most recent. We have a pretty small closet in our entry way and who really likes to hang up their coat on a hanger everyday? This was my solution. I made the main frame out of poplar. I think if I had thought this through more, I would have used a lighter, more consistent grain wood such as maple. Poplar has a varied grain color and has a green hue to it. I was really looking to achieve a very strong contrast between it and the walnut trim I used to cover up my joints. Live and learn!

Construction of this project was pretty easy with the right tools. Right tools being a tennoning jig. Here is one that I made and it works pretty well for me. I don't remember where I got the idea for it but I think it was out of a book. Once I remember which book, I'll post the title. I needed this jig to create half lap joints to construct the poplar frame. This joint is pretty easy to create and is pretty strong because the amount of glue surface. The one turn off to this joint is the look of the end grain but in this project, it was covered with the walnut trim. To hold the mirror, I rabbited a channel in the back. The mirror is simply held in with mirror/panel hardware that I ordered from Woodcraft. They come in a couple different depths, so I had to take into account the depth of my rabbit and the thickness of my mirror.

After I had my poplar frame completed, I decided to trim up the edges with walnut. This is where a lot of hand work was necessary. At the time, I didn't have a jointer. In order for the walnut to sit flush to my frame, I had to hand plane areas that were not square. This took quite a bit of time, but worth it because the result I achieved was a seamless transition between the poplar frame and walnut trim. I simply cut the corners of the walnut trim to a 45 degree angle and attached it with glue and 1 1/4 inch brads. After completing all that hand planing, I did buy a jointer! It's awesome!

The shelf was assembled with a single piece of poplar which I notched on the ends and slide into a dado I created. This step took a little bit of trial and error, but I was careful to take off a little material at a time. You can always take material off but its really hard to put it back!

The final two steps were to put the coat hooks on, and hang the frame on the wall. For me, the hanging step was done twice! With a heavy mirror, and coats this projects becomes heavy very quickly. I was very careful to find some STRONG hooks and locate studs in the wall to ensure that it wouldn't fall off the wall.