All my projects are made from recycled materials and on finding this table I was not sure at first what I was going to do with it.  My daughter had just bought a beauty bar and loved the idea of having all her makeup and beauty supplies in one place. So that was what I decided to do, It would be a makeup beauty bar as they are called in Australia.

How to repurpose a desk into a Makeup table/dresser

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Stripping down the desk

As much as I love wood I knew no women would buy a wooden coloured beauty bar (Makeup table).  To make it more appealing to the younger generation I knew I would have to paint the wood. And nowadays there is not much call for an old-fashioned writing desk. So a beauty bar it was.  I started by removing all the hardware, which I loved so I kept them to be put back on when completed.

I used a rubber mallet and gently hit the sides of the paper tray and partitions to remove them. 

To build a new box on the top of the dresser I used scrap wood because it was going to be painted you would not see the wood.

Building partitions

Because I used recycled wood I don’t like to spend hours sanding off all the old stain and varnish.  To clean up the wood I pushed it through the thickness planer which cleaned the wood up in seconds.  I used a wood router with a round-over router bit to round the tops of the wood for a softer look.  And then smoothed off the wood using an orbital sander starting with 120 grit sanding discs and ending with 240 grit discs.

I marked out where I wanted my partitions to be, using my makeup sets as a guide.  I used a square ruler to make sure the partitions were straight before I attached them permanently. This is where I made a time-consuming mistake.  I did not sand the base before I made my partition box which made it very hard for me to sand them.

To attach the partitions to the desk I used a nail gun and wood glue. I nailed the partitions in from the back and the front to hold the wood in place while the glue dried.

Making the lid

To make the lid for the table I used an offcut of an old tabletop.  I measure the size that I wanted and allowed for a 2cm overhang in the front.  I used a scrap piece of wood to make a fence which was clamped to the table as a guide for the jigsaw.

Next, I sanded down all the wood, which took a long time because it was difficult to get the sander into the partitions. I left the lip on the end of the table because it looked like an added decoration.  I did a test fit to make sure the top fits correctly and continued to sand down the whole desk.  Even though chalk paint is supposed to cover scratches I sanded most of the imperfections away.

There were areas at the back of the desk that had deep scratches.  I filled these using wood filler and sanded them smooth with an orbital sander using 180 grit sanding discs and ending with 240grit.

Painting the dresser

When I was browsing Pinterest one day I say a chest of drawers painted in this colour and I just loved it.  It is not very easy to get Annie Sloan chalk paint in Australia and it was very expensive because the colour I wanted was called peacock which was made up of 3 different colours of paint.  But I had my heart set on the colour so I paid the price. 

This being my first chalk paint project I was not convinced about the claim of no priming or sanding and once I added the first coat my heart sunk because you could still see through to the wood.  But the second coat was great I really did cover the wood well. I added 2 coats of Peacock paint, which was made up of 2 parts  Napoleonic Blue + 1 part Antibes Green+ 1 part Aubusson Blue. And I added 2 coats of clear wax. 

I found hinges similar in colour to the ones already on the box. The hinges for the lid were put on as well as all the old drawer pulls. 

I was going to leave the lid without a handle which could still be pulled up by the 2 cm overhang at the front.  But because I had a handle leftover I put it on the lid.  I measured the lid to find the centre and found the centre on the hinge.  I drilled my holes and used screws with a washer around the head to secure the handle.

Adding the hardware to the dresser

I always have a stock of these decorative corners which I added to the front to get a nicer look

I added a lift hinge to the inside of the lid, which I had to fit many times because I kept getting the position wrong.  So it might be a good idea to fit this when building.  I did have to fill in the holes with wood filler and repaint the wood.  This is where I learnt another lesson. Always mix a little extra paint for touch-ups.  Lucky for me my touch-ups were inside the lid so no one would see that the colour was slightly different.

Adding a mirror

No beauty bar would be complete without a mirror on the inside of the lid.  We all need to see where we are putting on our makeup so this was a must.  I had a piece of a mirror leftover from a fake live edge mirror which I took it down to our local window shop and asked them to cut a piece the size that I needed.

To attach the mirror I originally used self-adhesive velcro, but it fell down the first day.  I ended up using mirror corners to secure them in place. The image below is the most accurate picture of the final colour.  All the other pictures looked like a light blue but I think it was the sunlight that affected the colour.

Adding accessories to the inside

I lined all the drawers and the compartments using a nonslip mat that I attached to the bottom using double-sided tape. And finally, to make it more appealing to a buyer I added some plastic baskets for loose makeup like mascaras, eyeliners and lipsticks. The bigger partition was to store a hairdryer and straightener.

Side View

More repurposed desk ideas

This old desk was repurposed into a standup sandpit.

Another desk repurposed into a Lego table for a toddler.

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