How to trim a mirrored closet door
All ways to mount a mirror to a cabinet door. Whether and how to glue it on reliably?
There are times when there is a need to install a mirrored surface on a cabinet door. An experienced craftsman with their own efforts to do it will not be difficult, but for a person without experience the situation can turn into a real problem. This article will help familiarize you with mounting methods, tools, and following the instructions to glue the mirror to the cabinet.
Casement design
The sash of a closet door consists of profiles:
All of this together looks like the picture. In this frame, in the grooves, you insert the door material of your choice. It can be glass, mirror, laminated chipboard and other materials.
Separating profiles are not necessary. They are needed if you assemble the sashes of different materials or you just like them in this form. The maximum thickness of the filling material is 10 mm, the minimum 4 mm. Thinner glass, plastic, mirror are inserted through the gasket.
To make the door leaf be able to move, the upper and lower castors are put on it. The lower rollers carry the whole weight of the door, and the upper rollers stabilize the vertical position of the leaf, not allowing it to deviate.
Rollers are attached to the side profiles with special fasteners.
How to remove the mirror from the closet door
Carrying out repairs to the home, which for many years to come will be a refuge for you and your family. an activity natural and useful, especially if carried out in a timely manner, however, consuming a lot of effort.
Sometimes even such a simple task as removing the mirror from the cabinet can be overwhelming if you do not know the special secrets developed over the years by professional builders.
Mirrors are usually glued to the cabinets are firmly, or screwed on with the help of fasteners. But their shape can be annoying, and over time they get damaged. Let’s learn how to remove them by studying several techniques for separating mirrors from the surface of the cabinet.
Step-by-step instructions for gluing the mirror
For example, we will consider the classic variant. gluing a mirror to the cabinet door, the mirror has large dimensions and requires a high security fixation.
Pre-drilled holes for hinges in the doors. It is not difficult to do this, you should only pay attention to the distance and symmetry.
Put the mirror on the door and check the dimensions of the elements.
Practical tip. Protect the amalgam layer from damage, through scratches are visible on the front surface.
In order to prevent mechanical damage to the backside of the mirror, put a soft cloth or other protective gasket between the door plate and the mirror. Amalgam is an alloy of mercury with metals, is a heterogeneous or homogeneous system, can be liquid or solid. To make cheap reflective coatings, most often tin or zinc is dissolved in mercury, less often silver.
If the doors have roundings on the perimeter, the edge of the mirror should not reach their turn. Otherwise, a gap will appear between the parts, dirt will accumulate in it over time, and the appearance of the furniture will suffer significantly. It is best to check the position of glass and furniture board with your fingers, this is the most accurate and sensitive tool, professional furniture makers very often do the final check of various joints only with their hands. This is comfortable, fast and very accurate.
Check the correct location of the hole according to the pre-drawn sketch.
If a door handle is planned on the mirror, it is recommended that the hole be drilled in special workshops. Doing such work yourself is not recommended for several reasons.
- First, you must have a set of special tools and devices for drilling the glass.
- Secondly, only experienced craftsmen can do such work, the first attempt is often unsuccessful.
- Thirdly, the cost of professional services is much less than the price of a new mirror. And it will have to be bought to replace the damaged one.
On the cabinet door, make hole marks on the mirror. This should also be done on the second door.
Until the final marking it is not recommended to remove the mirrors, let them lie in place. This will give you the opportunity to check the correctness of their placement and compliance of the marks made at any time.
Remove the mirror and drill through holes for the handles. Constantly check the position of the elements.
Now the preparatory operations are finished, you can start directly to glue
Glue the mirror
Prepare the work surface of the table, it must be flat and clean.
Important. The size of the work table is chosen so that the door will fit the full length of it.
The fact that the laminated boards are not very strong. If the edges are hanging down, then under the influence of its own weight, the board will sag a little. The mirror is made of glass, and it is much stiffer than the boards and at this distance almost does not bend. As a result. between the surfaces there will be a gap that will have an extremely negative impact on the quality of gluing elements.
Prepare the adhesive for use. The glue is sold in plastic tubes and can be squeezed with a spray gun.
- Use a sharp knife to cut the sealed end of the tube, do not touch the threaded part. The glue is sealed completely hermetically, thus increasing storage time. Before using, look closely at the date of manufacture and time of use, never buy poor or expired materials.
- Screw a cone onto the thread, cut the end at an angle of about 30°. Note that you can cut the cone at different distances, thus adjusting the size of the diameter. If you glue large surfaces, increase the diameter of the cone, and for small elements decrease the opening.
- Insert the prepared tube of glue with the screwed end cap into the gun, gently push it against the glue piston and press until the glue comes out.
Release the piston stroke locking lever as quickly as possible after each glue application. If you don’t do this, quite a bit of material will come out after the gluing process is complete. It can stain the surface of the mirror or cabinet, and it is very difficult to remove the glue after it hardens. In addition, unproductive losses increase, it is better to save the compound and use it profitably.
Very carefully degrease the surfaces of the elements, the strength of the glue very much depends on it. You can use special products or common solvents. After degreasing, the surfaces must be completely dry. Work with compositions carefully, some of them are quite poisonous.
According to the supplied instructions, apply glue to the surface of the door. Often it is a longitudinal strips at a distance of about 10 cm. But in practice, to increase the reliability of fixing it is recommended to increase the size, if possible, it is necessary to fill the maximum area of the jointed parts.
Put the mirror on the door and check its position. Be sure to pay attention to whether the holes in the glass and furniture board coincide. Experienced craftsmen recommend inserting any objects of suitable diameter in them, they center the holes and completely exclude unintentional movement. If the glue freezes completely after moving, you can’t fix the defect. Modern high-quality compositions have a very high adhesion, to tear the glass from the surface of the furniture board even theoretically impossible, it is sure to crack. Always remember this and work with utmost care.
If the problem does happen, you should try to save the door, the mirror will have to be replaced anyway, let it crack. Remove it in pieces and use thin metal tools or appliances if necessary.
When the gluing is finished, it is advisable to press the cabinet parts down slightly, use pieces of board or other large objects for this purpose. Allow time for the composition to dry or cure, the specific parameters are indicated by the manufacturer on the surface of the tube.
To install the new mirror element, the cabinet door is placed horizontally on the floor or on the table. The size of the table should not be less than the size of the door, so you can put it on the table completely. If the door hangs off the table, there is a risk that it will sag. Then a gap is formed between the elements, because of it is impossible to glue the mirror material properly.
Fixing with a special glue is done in several steps:
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Prepare glue to work: cut off the end of the tube without touching the threaded part. Screw a cone onto the thread, cut the end at an angle of 30°. You can cut the cone at different distances, adjusting its diameter. For large surfaces the diameter of the cone can be increased, for small surfaces the diameter can be decreased.
When the tube of glue is ready, put it in the gun.
Personal Blog of Petrovich
I want to share how I removed the mirror from a closet door. I apologize that there are no illustrations, I did not think at that moment to photograph, but I can not tell about it too, because at the moment there is nothing but the string method, I have not found in the net. Once watched a video how to remove the mirror from the door with a string on the accelerator. My way was faster than the clip on high speed recording.
The mirror is usually glued to three strips, on the edges and one in the middle. To cut all three with a wire hard and long, therefore I cut off lateral strips with a blade from a hacksaw on metal (by the way tried an ordinary wallpaper knife also cuts perfectly)
It remains to cut only one central strip, I used a meter metal ruler, just put it behind the mirror and two hands pulled to nis.
True, I do not know whether this method will work if the mirror is glued to the liquid nails.
Why closets are so popular?
Closets. roomy and comfortable option of cabinet furniture, which is used to store all kinds of things. Inside, such models are quite spacious and can accommodate a very, very much stuff, although in appearance they do not clutter the space and can look like part of the wall. Inside the cabinet can have and hangers, and bars for clothes, as well as various drawers, shelves, boxes. all at the discretion of the owner.
How to Install Sliding Mirror Closet Doors Instead of Bi-Fold
For the record! On the sashes of the wardrobe-compartment can be installed a large mirror, which means that additional mirrors in the apartment is not required. And it will save space in the house, which is important for small apartments.
Such cabinets can be installed in any room and even use them to hide beams or wall projections, if intelligently positioned. And so again, there is a solution to some of the problems with free space. After all, the same beam that is inside the built-in closet, will not spoil the look of the interior, and at the same time does not prevent the use of the cabinet, as it will take up not much space inside it.
Typically, closets are made in size from the floor to the ceiling, which means that all the free space on top will be used. Inside you can make shelves and use them as a mezzanine. You can not do this with an ordinary cabinet.
Just a reminder! Not all cabinets are built-in closets. There are also those that are manufactured in the factory and sold as ready-made cabinets. They may have a lower height, but are still quite convenient to use due to the lack of the need to swing the doors.
Advantages of closets
- Significant savings in space, as well as the ability to use the entire area occupied by the closet in the most beneficial way. And you do not have to worry about how to open the doors. you just slide them aside to get access to the inside contents of the closet.
- Amazing capacity. Sometimes the closet seems very small and has modest dimensions, but it can hold a lot of things.
- These cabinets are versatile and can be installed both in the hallway and in the room.
Well, of course, it is impossible not to mention that the closet looks beautiful and stylish. It is able to change and embellish the interior of any room, making it much prettier than if an ordinary double-wing closet was installed in it. And if all the doors of the compartment are finished with mirrors, then this solution will visually increase the space of the room, rather than reduce it.
How to cut or tear off the mirror cloth from the door, glued with double-sided adhesive tape?
Double-sided tape does not seem as impressive as liquid nails, but this is not entirely true, because the mirror can be glued to it not only in the middle and along the edges, but also over the entire area. If desired, the mirror can also be torn from the place of attachment, but there is a great risk of breaking the thing and injuring your hands with large splinters, so it is better to discard this method immediately and do not try to use it under any circumstances.
A good way to remove the mirror from the double-sided tape is similar to one of the above, using a cutting wire. If there is no object of such purpose, you can take a strong string or any thin but strong wire, which will pass between the mirror and the door and will not break in the process of sawing.