Remove Glued On Rental Mirror
In our apartment there were two mirrors that were large rectangles. They were screwed on, but after removing the screws, it appeared they were also glued to the wall. We needed to remove it because we wanted to paint the walls and to put a cuter mirror. The task was scary, but actually turned out to be so easy.
You can see the small plastic screws around the edge of the mirror.
I read online that it's POSSIBLE that the mirror would break at some point. We didn't want to risk anything so even though the chances seemed low, we duct taped it off.
Take your shims and wedge just a tiny bit under the mirror. You don't have to put it very far under at this point and although I watched a lot of videos where they only did it from top down, we did it from the side with no problem. We would have had to take out the light fixture to get into it from the top.
Be delicate and gently tap the shim down into the space behind the mirror. The shim will go all the way in and will disappear. When that happens, get another shim and tap it down behind the first. Keep moving down the side of the mirror or along the top.
It seemed like overkill, but I just wanted to make sure I was protected if there was a breakage.
Gently tug forward as you get it further down the mirror and you should hear a quiet tearing sound as it pulls off the wall. This is great and exactly what you want. When it's time, just be prepared also that it might be heavier than you thought so you want to be prepared to get it.
Minor tearing of the wall and some loose paint
I used a putty knife to chip the big pieces of paint away, gently sanded, and spackled over it.
Check out my other projects to see what happens next on this bathroom :)
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STRONGLY suggest to use heavy LEATHER gloves. I do glass work and know the gloves shown by the author of the post are thin garden gloves. Should the glass pull away from the wall and break the gloves in the pictures will not keep you from injury. Be Safe.
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Yep, these are just garden gloves, so I'd agree that if you had better gloves to use them!
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I’ve always wanted to do this to the BIG mirror in my powder room under my stairs. Sooooo many times I’ve thought of it but, lacked the courage because I figured it would be difficult, time consuming, dangerous, and above all, it would make a tremendous mess! You guys make it look so easy. I may follow through on this project after all!
Thanks so much for sharing this!
You guys rock!
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