My 13 year-old tomboy daughter has recently gotten into more “girly” things- fixing her hair, lotions, perfumes, candles, etc. She recently re-arranged her room, and she wanted to turn her desk into a “getting ready” place.

One thing she realized was that all of her different items took up so much space on her desk. Stephen mentioned building her a custom shelf for her desk, and she got to planning. She was able to design her shelf to fit her items perfectly! Since her desk isn’t that big, the shelf had to be on the smaller side. She wanted a shelf that was about 12″ wide, 4″ deep, and 22″ tall.

Stephen used spare wood to build it, and cut and connected the pieces (with wood glue and pocket hole screws) at the heights she had wanted. He put wood filler in the screw holes, let it dry, and then sanded the shelf really well. He bought some 1/2″ trim for a few bucks to put on the edges of the shelf to make it look nicer.

Once it was done, I painted it white. She loves it… it is just what she needed!