Mirror Removal

 

THERESA: I’ve got a wall of mirrors in my home and I was wondering what the best way was to remove them.

 

LESLIE: And are they like floor-to-ceiling, super-giant, glued-on, as impossibly glued as possible?

 

THERESA: Well, I’m not sure. They’ve got – they’re in pieces and there are these little – they look like little rosettes that may be holding them on and I’m kind of afraid to even attempt to remove them.

 

TOM: Mm-hmm. Well, it can be somewhat dangerous. We can give you one trick of the trade and that is that sometimes the professional mirror companies, what they’ll do is they’ll actually run a wire behind that and try to get the wire between the mirror and between the wall and pulling it down …

 

LESLIE: Just sort of slice the adhesive.

 

TOM: Yeah, and generally what it does is strips the adhesive off the wall and almost always takes some of the paper of the drywall with it; so you have quite a bit of repair work to be done but it beats breaking the mirrors up. However, if you do this, you’ve got to be really careful; you’ve got to have safety glasses; you’ve got to have gloves. Because the mirror could break at any time.

 

LESLIE: And use like a clear contact paper or some sort of contact paper across the face of the mirror so that if it does break it doesn’t go like shattering everywhere; it sort of just breaks but sticks to the paper and sort of falls off in one piece if it does. But those rosettes that you describe – in the corner, Theresa – those could really simply just be holding like a sheet mirror to the wall because that’s generally what those are used for. So look at those rosettes; see if there’s a screw in it, are they nailed in; if you removed it, does the mirror sort of back away from the wall. You know, start with a corner and see what happens before you get all crazy.

 

THERESA: Alright. Well, thank you.

 

TOM: You’re welcome. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.