We will start with
A Dressing-Table
Since the writer made one herself for her room in a log-house in the mountains of Pennsylvania, she is quite sure it can be done with very little practice in carpentry or cabinet-making.
Fig. 11.
Fig. 12.
The dressing-table is made of two pine shelves, two cigar-boxes, two small brackets, and an ordinary mirror. For the large shelf choose a board about twelve inches wide or wider, if you have one, measure the space your dressing-table is to occupy, mark the size on the board with a pencil, using your try-square to make your line at right angles with the edge of your board, and saw off the board at the ruled line. If the room is neither plastered nor ceiled and the uprights are left uncovered, let the large shelf reach across from one upright to the next, and make the smaller shelf just long and wide enough to fit in between. Saw out your supporting braces after the pattern given in Fig. 11, with the grain of the wood running up and down, making six in all; two for the large shelf, two for the small shelf, and two for the little side-brackets. Draw a line at each end of your shelf where the brace is to be fastened, and on this line bore two holes entirely through the board. With screws long enough to reach through the shelf and into the braces fasten the shelf and braces together, Fig. 12. Bore a hole near the bottom edge of each brace, as in Fig. 13, and directly over each brace screw into the top of the shelf, as near the edge as possible, a screw-eye, Fig. 14. Cover both shelves with pretty cretonne, putting a ruffle on the large shelf and drawing the material neatly over the edges of the smaller one.
Fig. 13.
On each end of the large shelf tack a cigar-box, which you have previously painted white. These boxes are for holding brushes and combs. Screw strong hooks into the uprights at the proper distance from the floor, then hook your large shelf on by the screw-eyes at the top, and screw the braces to the uprights through the holes at their lower corners. The upper shelf, not being so heavy, needs only the hooks and screw-eyes to support it, and screws at the bottom of the braces are unnecessary. Hang this only a little way above the other shelf. Make the small brackets of thinner wood and let them be square, of a size to fit the uprights. One brace for each bracket is all that is necessary, and the braces must, of course, be smaller than