DIY Dresser to Vanity Conversion

Last Thanksgiving (before the blog was born) I was enjoying some brainstorming with my sister-in-law. Being a mom of three, she was stumped at what to get her youngest teenage daughter for Christmas. She mentioned wanting to get or make a vanity to help free up the bathroom. We girls do love to groom. I mentioned my friend, Brandie over at Fresh Furniture, who always has interesting pieces just waiting to be customized or refreshed. She didn’t happen to have any vanities, but she did have a little dresser needing some love. It seemed perfect for some awesome diy pinterest customizations I had been wanting to try. Normally, I would wait for Fresh Furniture to find the perfect little piece (because she has amazing taste and is ALWAYS my #1 source for unique furniture finds), but the Christmas Clock was ticking. Thus, the DIY Dresser to Vanity Conversion was born!

Here is what we started with. Really sweet, right? But not exactly a vanity. I needed to make this primp-perfect stat!

Since my sister-in-law and her family (our husbands are brothers) all live in Ohio and we live in Nashville, that presented a logistical challenge. We decided on a collaborative effort to all pitch in on this one gift together. They agreed to buy the dresser, and we would go pick it up, design the conversion and my Husband would do all the manual labor. He is the real artist here; I just draw it up and leave him to the terrible task of making my unrealistic expectations a reality. He’s got mad skills and is pretty much the best thing to ever happen to me. Plus, how often does someone finance your little dream project and say “do whatever you think is best- we trust you”? Don’t mind if I do!

First things first, when I say “we”, I mean I drew it up and my husband made it happen. Yeah, he’s dreamy like that. We disassembled the little lady as she was. She was too short to be any real kind of vanity and had no place to scoot your legs under. So we took out the bottom drawers, cut the base and frame to allow “scoot-under” room, and added legs.

She’s really coming along, right? But she needed some more details. On the left, we put in a holster for hair tools (blowdryer, straightener, curling iron, etc. for each of the holes) and an empty shelf on the right side for a basket. The idea was to cut up the drawer fronts to cover the holster and shelf. That way they would look like faux drawers to make it pretty, but still be a storage powerhouse! We also fashioned out of one of the drawer middles a little drop-in for the vanity counter (top center pic below). The point was to have a place to put makeup brushes, beauty products and other things that usually clutter up a lady’s dressing counter.

But we still need a little seat/bench, right? I was out walking in my neighborhood and two blocks over somebody had put out a set of wooden turn-leg chairs on the curb. One looked like a little matching bench, but when I got close, the back had just been broken off from the seat. Hmmm… not the prettiest, but it looked like the right size and was my favorite price: f-r-e-e! When I got it back to the house, it was the absolute perfect size to scoot into the vanity when not in use and allowed for the perfect leg room when in use. Plus, the legs looked great with the ones we had added to the vanity. So, I called up my oldest niece, who is the gift recipient’s older sister and a newlywed. Her part of the group gift was to find and fix up a little seat. I found it, but she painted it and reupholstered the seat cushion. Don’t you just love the fabric?

We still had to paint our vanity, of course, but nobody likes pictures of paint drying. See the faux drawer fronts covering those functional appliance holsters and the little drop in brush holder on the counter? Thanks to my husband’s genius, our niece can still pull that away from the counter to clean or if she drops a little earring in it. {Swoon!}

Let’s look back at her evolution before the final reveal.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I very much wanted to keep this little gem when she was all finished. Who wouldn’t?

See the appliances all tucked away below?

And the little brush holder all in use? All her stuff is still so accessible, but tucked away and organized. I need to sneak into their house and steal this lady back!

VANITY LOVE!

{SIGH}

Want to see my next big project? If you enjoyed this, I’ll bet you will love my Closet Envy Transformation!

So what do you think? Let me know if you want more details about how we did this. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss my next project! Thanks for reading.