James Stanley

I delivered an Oak Mirror to a lady

Fri 27 May 2016

My latest business venture is Bristol Oak Mirrors. The website is crap but the idea is I make oak-framed mirrors and sell them.

I made a batch of 5 to start with.

So far I've sold 2 of them, making this the second-most-profitable business venture I've ever done.

It started when I wanted a frame for a piece of mirror glass we had lying around from an old dressing table. I made an oak frame for it and it looked sweet:

So I went to the Bristol Wood Recycling Project and bought a bunch more oak. I haggled on the price and amazingly they caved and gave me the wood cheaper than advertised. Result!

I thought I could make 5 mirrors in a day but it ended up taking me 3 days. I think I'll get better though.

I listed the mirrors on eBay and Gumtree this week, and so far I've posted one off on eBay (the postage came to £30! What a rip!) and delivered one to a lady in Yate.

Delivering the mirror was awesome. I took a bag of tools, felt like a proper little tradesman.

The lady was replacing a non-oak mirror and so already had mounting screws on the wall, but they weren't lined up with the tabs on my mirror so I moved the tabs. Her children laughed at me using the drill. I'm not sure if they enjoyed watching it or were just mocking my technique.

It was a massive buzz to show one to a customer for the first time, and she really liked it. She said to let her know if I'm selling any other oak furniture but I told her I only do mirrors.