It seems like overnight our oldest daughter has gone from being unconcerned with her looks to spending all of her time going over hair tutorials and practicing new looks. Her wish list now consists of curling irons, blow dryers, hair rollers, etc. I started to picture all of these items clogging the sink in her shared bathroom or scattered on the floor. I could imagine her sister banging on the door asking her to hurry up so she can use the bathroom. A solution needed to be found to prevent an internal war in our house! I then remembered back to my childhood when my sister would get ready in her room, a dresser full of the before mentioned items and I wondered if a similar solution could be found.
After a conversation with Ashley, it was agreed that Art Girl should have a space in her room to do her hair and to get ready for school. This of course got my creative juices flowing and I set out to design a “Beauty Station” for her. Even better was the fact that I still had the bottom part of that old dresser that I used for the dresser to desk conversion a year or so back.
Below is the conceptual drawing and where this all started.
I started out by cutting off the top drawer of the two drawers that I had left. Some painters tape is key to making sure that you dont chip off any unnecessary wood when cutting.
I then topped it off with some 3/4″ mdf with a routed edge.
The back of the station is an old door that I picked up at second hand supply house for a few dollars. It got bolted to the dresser with 4 bolts and some Gorilla Glue. At the very top of the door I put a shelf that I picked up at Goodwill and then topped it off with a scrap piece of wood. I felt like it gave it a very nice custom crown molding look.
The next step was to add a mirror to the door and put molding around it. The mirror I already had on hand and was one of the $10 dollars mirrors you can pickup at Wal-Mart. The trim I also had on hand. The sides pieces are chair rail from the kid’s rooms and the top and bottom pieces are window casings that I used on another project.
I wanted to add another small drawer to this piece to hold smaller items like bows, barrets, etc. Since I was trying to do this project for little or no money, I cut an old display case in half, built a box around it, threw on a knob and called it good. (you can see the smaller drawer in the finished pics below)
Now all the functional pieces were in place, the entire station just needed a few coats of paint. Luckily I had all of that on hand too. The pink for the molding is actually the same pink that is in the room for which this station will end up. I tried to antique it a bit using some glaze but it didn’t quite turn out like I wanted.
Here is the end result with paint.
So now that the station was complete, I still had the issue of no place to put hair dryers, curlers etc. That was the whole intent of this project in the first place. Many ideas had crossed my mind including PVC pipe (danger of melting), professions holders (too expensive) and silverware holders (my choice). The silverware holders won and I managed to find some on the internet for only $2.00 apiece!
Now that I had the holders, I needed someplace to attach them. Lucky for me, I had an old wooden stool sitting around the shop that never really found a home.
I borrowed a hold saw from a friend and cut 4 holes into it.
In order to hide the silverware holders from view in the front of the stool, I cut an old drawer front to size and glued/nailed it into place.
Here is the finished holder with everything in place and glued down. I finished it off with a few coats of black enamel spray paint.
Now everything is done and ready to go into my daughter’s room for her styling enjoyment. 🙂