How to Make MDF Look Like Worn Wood

Hello everyone! Today’s post is going to be short and sweet–kind of like how this project was 🙂

Goodwill has 50% Saturdays at least twice a month and unless I’m too busy to get over there I almost always have to stop in to see if I can score a bargain. Even though this awesome mirror was a yellow tag item (which sadly wasn’t part of the sale that day–boo!) I couldn’t pass it up at only $4.99!

When I brought it home the hubby looked at me like I was nuts because it was almost identical to the one we already had hanging in our entryway.

(Sorry about the Christmas in July pic–I didn’t grab a picture of it before I took it down to replace it with the new one haha)

BUT.  What he didn’t understand was that this was the big sister version since it measures about 6 inches wider!

Even though it was in pretty good shape there were a few dings that needed to be sanded down and the mirror was starting to fall off.  I am guessing that is why a lot of people probably passed it by.

Getting the mirror re-secured was a quick 2 minute fix with the staple gun on the back where the cardboard held the mirror in.

And since sanding out the dings exposed the brown MDF underneath the paint, I decided to give it a treatment to look more like real wood.

I started by applying some darker paint as my base coat.

And once that was dry, I followed it with two coats of white.

After running over it with some fine sandpaper to it to expose the darker paint underneath, I was left with a worn wood look.

Doesn’t this mirror fill the space so much better than the smaller version?  The other one always seemed too skimpy and it bothered the heck out of me every time I looked at it.

You may have noticed that I upgraded our skinny table to something more sturdy.  Even though “Mr. Skinny” was one of my first DIY projects, I wasn’t too sad to see him go because I think this one looks so much better.

In some spots I got a little crazy with the sandpaper and exposed some of the MDF. I was worried about it at first, but it actually ended up making it look even more like wood. I guess I knew what I was doing after all 😉

Easy right?  I put the old mirror up on a Facebook sale group and it sold super quick for $20. So not only do I have a better sized mirror, I also made a little bit of money off of the switcheroo 🙂

I hope you all have a great rest of the week!