Flexibility
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall… Not Love at First Sight, but Suddenly Exciting Later!
Not even noticeable, didn’t fit the stereotype, blended in with the others
It was just like a story from a romance novel, but it wasn’t a person. I don’t get excited about much, except when dancing with my wife. Almost never about stuff.
However, I felt a rare thrill radiate throughout my body the first time I tried out the bathroom mirror in the store’s display! Who would ever have thought a mirror would do something like that. Usually, men succumb to cars.
We are remodeling the vanity area of my bathroom to increase counter space and storage area. The number one goal is to move most everything off of the countertop.
The room is small, so we can’t put in a larger cabinet.
We’ll have a carpenter build a box into the wall to hold everything — easy to reach, easy to clean, and easier to see. The whole area is covered by a 28" x 42" mirror, which will have to be removed and replaced.
The designer gave us a price of $200 for a similar but smaller mirror. He recommended that we find one on our own and they would install it. I looked at a couple-hundred mirrors on the internet, but we learned with another internet purchase that the picture is not the same as seeing something in person.
So, my wife and I went shopping. We tried to find a rectangular mirror to fill the empty space. A little smaller one, like the one in my wife’s bathroom, would also work. That one was no longer available. After searching numerous stores, we would up at IKEA in Orlando, FL.
Breaking away from the stereotype
The store had about a dozen samples on display. I looked at the rectangles and squares, trying out some to see how they would look when I shaved in the morning. A couple I would have bought were out of stock. I looked, but never seriously considered any other shape.
Then, I glanced at a 21" round mirror. When I tried it out, it was perfect. It would fit nicely on the wall, not take up an overwhelming amount of space, and had a petite, light-brown frame. Beautiful for the location. And the tag said the store still had two of them. Perfection for only $29 instead of hundreds.
Heartbreak!
When we went to pick it up, it was out of stock and they would not sell the display model. We first tried to order it online, but they could not guarantee a delivery date and charged $129 for shipping. I had to have a mirror when the construction was finished.
We checked IKEA stores from Miami to Atlanta. All were out of stock. They had some in Houston, TX but that is over 1,000 miles from my house. We weren’t going to Houston for a $29 mirror, especially during this epidemic.
So, I had to find a temporary or permanent replacement. We visited all of the local stores advertising mirrors — nothing reasonable in any shape. One 13" mirror, much smaller, could serve in an emergency.
Finally, we drove by a home décor store not on the list and decided to look there. They had a 16" mirror with a 3" frame on sale for 14 dollars. It would cover about the same wall space and the frame was nearly the same color as the IKEA mirror. It will serve perfectly until IKEA gets the one I want back in stock.
Conclusion
We spent months discussing design options to solve the problems and never once thought about the mirror. I consider us fortunate to have found something wonderful and an interim solution while waiting for the one I want, and at 22% of the cost.
I can patiently wait for the new mirror to arrive.
I never thought I would get excited about looking at the mirror while shaving.
A couple months later: I found the perfect mirror at Walmart, the cheapest one they had, perfect size, and it matched the paint on the walls. It does not fog up, either.
Lesson learned. Don’t follow the stereotype, although 80,000+ houses in The Villages, FL have large, rectangular mirrors. Look for alternatives, as long as they do the job.
