DIY Grid Style Home Gym Mirror

23 August

One thing every public gym has is huge mirrors so you can watch yourself flex your muscles! Actually, I think it's so you can make sure your form looks good, but I like to throw a few poses in there too! 😂

I think a home gym should also have some mirrors and we wanted to add some to the gym we are creating at my boyfriend's house too.

Check out the Home Gym Design Board I created for this room if you haven't seen it yet.

The mirror that I had added to my design board was from Busy With D and was my inspiration for our mirror. We didn't want ours quite as large and we wanted it to hang on the wall. The bigger, the heavier... so we opted to go a little bit smaller.

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Supplies You Need to Make Your Own

1/4" plywood cut to the size you want your finished mirror (Lowe's and Home Depot will cut it for you)
Scrap wood pieces for stabilizing (optional)
Trim pieces to create the grid - we used wooden screen molding
Wood glue
Mirror Tiles
Mirror Mastic and Caulking Gun
Paint in the color of your choice
Hanging hardware (we used D-rings, heavy-duty picture wire, and a big screw into the stud in the wall)

To make our mirror, we just happened to have some scraps of 1/4" plywood left over from the flooring project. We used it to create a new layer of subfloor for our self-adhesive tile floors.

To figure out how big to cut the plywood, figure out how many rows of mirrors you want both vertically and horizontally. We chose 3 each way, so 9 tiles total. The tiles are 12" x 12" so that's 36". Add in the width of the screen molding pieces. We had 4 pieces of screen molding horizontally and 4 pieces vertically (this includes the outside edge pieces). The molding is 3/4" wide (or .75).

.75 x 4 = 3 inches

36" of mirror tiles + 3" of molding = 39"

Step 1 - Cut the plywood to that measurement, in our case 39" x 39".

Note: If you want your mirror larger and leaning against the wall instead of hanging, I would recommend thicker plywood. We opted for the thinner plywood to make our mirror lighter and easier to hang but it would not be sturdy enough for a larger mirror.

Step 2 - Add stabilizing pieces of wood to the back of your plywood with wood glue if you are making a wall-hanging mirror with thin 1/4" plywood. You won't need this if you are using 1/2" or thicker plywood. We used some scrap wood that we had in the garage. If you need to buy this, these are 1" thick x 3" wide.

Weigh it down and allow it to dry overnight.

Step 3 - Flip it over and measure and cut the screen molding. I mocked mine up so I could get my measurements exactly right but I did not glue the mirrors down yet.

Step 4 - add the outside edge pieces of screen molding with wood glue. Clamp and let dry overnight.

Step 5 - paint the trim pieces.

Step 6 - Add the first row of mirror tiles with mirror mastic. It comes in a tube, like caulking so just squeeze out a bead of it back and forth across the back of the mirror tile. Press down firmly with your hands (make sure you have something stable to support it underneath when you push down if you have added the stabilizing wood pieces).

Step 7 - Add the screen molding and the next row of mirror tiles and then repeat making sure each row of the mirror is pushed up snug against the molding pieces.

Step 8 - touch up any paint that needs it (or finish painting it if you got carried away and forgot to paint some pieces before you glued them down like I did😁)

Step 9 - add hanging hardware and hang your awesome new grid mirror up (or lean it if you created that style)!

This would be cool as a dressing mirror too!