Fancy Dress Clothes Rack..from a CD storage unit?

Scarlett loves her imaginary play which means her fancy dress collection is quite vast, taking over half of her wardrobe and numerous toy boxes. So as part of my on going plans to put both girls in the same bedroom and create a dressing room in the spare room I decided to have a go at making a dressing up clothes rack with built in bits and bobs storage.

The end result. 

I found an old CD shelving unit which we bought from Ikea about 8 years ago and set to work with a jig saw and screw driver to try and create something a bit more useful and pretty.

 The selves before. 

After taking apart one half of the selves I used the two longest lengths as my side pieces to the rack. I cut out a curved top to remove any sharp edges.

Tip: I cut both sides at the same time so both end pieces matched even if I went a bit wobbly with the jig saw.

The unit sides

I took apart the second half of the shelves and cut down two lengths to make the base sides and the backing card to the shelves became the bottom of the storage tray. I used these cut down pieces as a template to cut an old gardening hoe handle which is now the hanging pole. 

I screwed together the side pieces to the base sides.

I then screwed in the hanging pole and lastly tacked the backing card to the underside of the base to create the storage tray.

Lastly using over some left over paint from decorating the hallway and our bedroom I painted the unit. I kept the hanging rail free from paint as it would wear off after time anyway.

I did the last coat of paint this morning and it was finished. I've just ordered some wooden hangers which should make it look a bit more uniform and ordered.

Scarlett loves it as she can reach all her favourite dresses and change outfits as many times as she likes.