My wife desperately needed some organization for her vanity in her room. She had been using an old desk from her childhood, which provided a few nice drawers for storage. A large mirror hung on the wall over the desk to help her get ready. But she had the habit of covering the desk’s surface with various day-to-day clutter, cosmetics, and jewelry. I proposed to solve this problem with a new set of drawers.
I mapped out the size of the desk and created a basic design with two large drawer sets on the sits that stick out farther than a middle section with small jewelry drawers just under the large mirror on the wall.
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Basic Frames
I cut out the basic boxes (utilizing some old wood when I could). I also created nice drawers with slides.
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Beautification
Next, I started adding sections of red oak to the frame to give it some beauty to the piece. My homemade router table really helped make some cool shapes for the edges.
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Staining
I cut out all the drawer fronts and fit them, but I wanted to stain them before applying them to the rest of the drawers. I eventually settled on a Red Mahogany stain, it looked great with the Amber Shellac finish.
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Assembly
Next I had to assemble all the components and get those drawer fronts on. I ran into one snag, where one of the drawer fronts must have shifted after glue up (see fourth picture below). I ended up taking that drawer to the bandsaw, slicing off the front and re-gluing it.
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Jewelry Drawers
Next, I wanted to put some dividers in the center drawers. I cut little dividers from 1/4″ plywood. I then began to felt the drawers to make the jewelry not bang against the wood and to hold the little pieces in place. A little white glue held the felt perfectly in place.
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Final Topcoat
Next, I applied the final topcoat, the amber shellac. It combined beautifully with the red mahogany stain, for a perfect, classic-looking style with that red oak.
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Add the Hardware
Next, I added the hardware components that my wife had picked out. She chose a nice selection of button knobs and handles. Unfortunately, the hardware only came with 1″ and 1.5″ bolts, but I needed more like 1.25″. So, I had to cut the longer bolts down so that they’d fit. I built a little setup for my hack-saw and went to work on all the bolts. I really need to get a metal-working vise.
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Finished
The end result was a classic-looking collection of drawers, perfect for my wife’s vanity set.
