The Cabinet I Built in a Day

As much as I miss my husband being gone, I do enjoy the time to get projects done that, if I’m being frank, I couldn’t do if he was here because he would feel the urge to stand there and watch me.  I can’t work under that kind of pressure.

This project was a problem solving venture.  I had 3 issues with my bathroom.
1. I had never really covered my water heater and just had burlap stapled over the opening
2. I didn’t have a full length mirror so to see if my shoes matched my outfit I had to stand on a chair in my bedroom and try to use a mirror hanging on the wall
3. I had all of my necklaces on 3 hooks, which, became a tangled mess every day

So I put my thoughts to this and conquered all three problems at once.

This was the spot before:

It wasn’t horrible looking, but I still wanted to improve it.  I built a cabinet that covers the entire space side to side, floor to ceiling.  It’s 4″ deep.  Then I used 3 $9.99 IKEA mirrors to create a full length mirror.  And here it is…..

Here’s another angle:

But wait!  There’s more!  You can open the mirrored door and voila!  A place to hang my necklaces…

It counts as a time saver too since I won’t be spending 10 minutes finding and untangling the necklace I want each morning.

The scale in front of it is perfect there because I can still open the cabinet without moving anything.  I couldn’t be happier with my new cabinet/problem solver. (although I won’t be weighing myself naked anymore for obvious reasons)

I thought about doing a tutorial for you, but after about an hour of building I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  I kind of just made it up as I went along and had to figure out each step as I ran into issues.  Plus, let’s be real here….I actually have no idea what I’m doing and anyone with skills would read my tutorial and turn me into the Carpenter’s Association as a fraud.

But if you decide to make one I will say it was pretty easy and I finished the whole thing, including paint, in one day.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost:

In order to save money I used old slats from my pile of junk wood for the inside back, but you could easily use pallet wood also.  The burlap behind it is what was hanging on the wall before.  Free.  The paint was leftover from another project and the crown molding is a piece I had left from putting crown in my bedroom last year.
The rest breaks down like this:
hinges/screws/cup hooks $10
luan  (I made the door with this) $15
wood  $50  (the bulk of this was in the trim around the mirrors)
mirror glue  $5

Hardware store total : $80

IKEA mirrors  $30.00

Grand total: $110 (plus tax)

I’d love to have added more trim, but I was on a budget so it didn’t happen.  I’m still super-duper happy with it.

And my husband will be so surprised that I did it without being heavily observed.