Upcycling Project. Enormous Vintage Victorian Painted Mahogany Over Mantel Mirror. When and When Not to Upcycle Old Furniture

This is a very impressive, imposing mirror.

It would originally been the top half of a huge Victorian sideboard.

I bought this at Ford Market near Arundel and someone had already upcycled it. Having completed over 1000 similar projects in my time, I don’t feel fraudulent writing about it.

Huge, clunky sideboards were prevalent during the Victorian era, large cupboards with drawers and decorative mirrors on top. Over the years nobody wanted these any more, they really were just fashionable during the Victorian era and so they evolved from sideboards into separate cupboards and mirrors.

I explain here how and why these beautiful mirrors became orphaned from their bases.

As the mirrors sat on a sideboard and were held in place by the backing overlapping the base and being secured by screws, they had no bottom.

The large length of wood to the bottom is an addition and the very thick backing wood is attached to this, where it used to be attached to the back of the sideboard.

You can see in the image below what I mean. The four inches to the bottom t0 the side of the wood backing, below the carvings is the length of 4 x 2. You can therefore see how and where the bottom of the mirror section was screwed to the top rear of the sideboard.

The main carcass is made of pine and mahogany. All the decoration is solid mahogany. It is of the most outstanding build and quality.

This will work either as an over mantel mirror, or frankly anywhere else in the house.

It's just been painted in a light green, what appears to be a cross between gloss and eggshell. Whoever painted it made a pretty good fist of the job. I would describe the finish as very good, although in particular to the top there are some alien bumps that they have just painted over. To the centre of the low stretch of word there is a very slightly protruding circular mark.

The finish is very good, although there are a few blemishes which you can doubtless touch up. Importantly though, I am alive to the fact that you may well not like the colour, but as it has an existing finish to it you really only just do to add more paint to the colour of your choice and not have to do any preparation work.

This has obviously recently sat on a mantel piece, which would have taken all the weight. The attachment mirror plates would merely have stopped it from leaning forward and creating one almighty crash, as most of the huge weight is due to the thickness of the original glass.

Isn’t it interesting how furniture evolves and how part of the upcycling process isn't actually about doing something amazingly creative but something just as simple as painting a redundant sideboard top. In this case it is a spectacular piece of furniture.

I know lots of people think you shouldn't paint things like this, and I understand that, if you see my online stores you will see I have lots of mahogany and oak over mantel mirrors, but someone has painted this literally because it needed a large piece of wood at the bottom. Clearly it was just a modern piece of wood and it really wouldn't have looked very good having an outstanding Victorian mahogany mirror, with a lump of modern pine at the base. To get it replaced by a proper vintage restorer would have cost maybe £500.

Painted furniture isn't as popular as it was 15 years ago, but it is still very popular now. People often complain what a waste it is to paint old mahogany, oak and walnut furniture etc. Over the years though I have painted lots of it, but I've only painted it if the finish is ruined, which is quite often the case after over a century of wear and certainly if ever I get any old furniture, which is not painted and in good condition, I would not dream of painting it.