Dress Up Station

Charlotte is OBSESSED with "costumes". She specifically asked for Santa to bring her a "Let it Go  pretty dress and shoes" for Christmas in exchange for her pacifiers. I may have had to search high and low but I finally found one in her size. She also left out all her pacifiers for Santa that night and hasn't asked for one since! But I digress. She ended up with so many dress up items, it left Tim and I looking for a storage solution.

I took to Pinterest to look for ideas. I really loved this fun blue one by Rain on a tin roof.  But the cost of the Billy bookshelf was a bit more than I wanted to spend. Plus it required a trip to Ikea, where I always spend more than planned!

I also really liked the dress up "cart" by Shanty 2 Chic.  I didn't need it to be a cart as we just planned to leave it out in the playroom. and I wanted to use the side cubbies for shoes. But it wasn't anything that couldn't be adapted. Plus they give FREE plans on their website, Looks like we had a winner!

We made a family trip to Lowe's to purchase supplies. We followed the plans provided for the most part. The exception is that we did not use plywood mentioned, we used pine boards cut to size. While we have access to a saw, our Christmas stuff was still in our garage and we wanted to avoid it being covered in saw just. I simply provided the cut list to Lowe's and had everything cut to size for me. I did however ask for them to cut additional 9 3/4 X 11 1/4 squares, as I knew I wanted to add more cubbies. We also chose not to add casters. I had left over paint from our Ikea Kitchen Makeover so that was one less cost as well. We walked out of Lowe's spending just under $39!

Tim set to work assembling the unit. It same together pretty quickly and was looking like this the next day!

We spaced out our "cubbies" 7 inches apart from the top of the bottom trim. The top one is slightly smaller but its perfect for open storage. I filled all the pocket holes with wood filler and sanded everything down. I used the leftover paint from the Kitchen on the inside and white paint on the outside. I also had some Benjamin Moore Advanced Paint leftover from another project and we had JUST enough to cover this. It took two coats.  I then made a trip back to Lowe's for two knobs. Charlotte picked out these pink ones.

And then I grabbed a mirror at TJ Maxx. I lucked out that there happened to be one the right size in the first store I went to! The mirror was $9.99. Once the paint dried, we attached the knobs and mirror and added felt pads to the bottom instead of the casters. We hung up all her "dress up" outfits and moved all over her shoes and jewelry.

She LOVES it. Although I will admit it has contributed to an increase in costume changing throughout the day!