Introduction: Home Hair Station

I have tried various ways of managing mirrors while cutting my own hair.
We have a Bathroom cabinet with mirrored  sliding doors.which is fine for a front view.
Then there are a few small shaving type mirrors dotted about the house.

If you are careful, you can hold a mirror in one hand by sort of draping your arm over the top and then can cut your hair with the other hand.

Recently I have been experimenting with a little web cam to help me see the back of my head and that works quite well once I get the camera in a good position especially as you can reverse the view on your computer so that your hands seem to be doing what your brain is telling you they are.

My other half also cuts his own hair with his hair clippers and we have a good chuckle while pointing out the tufty ones that got away before attacking them with the scissors.

Anyway,  it was time for something a bit easier to cope with as far as hand eye coordination is concerned.
So I decided to make a hanging hair salon.

For this project I used 

4 small mirrors from poundstretcher (2.99 for 4 at present) they have self adhesive pads with them
A roll of Gaffer/Duct tape (only a small amount was used from a roll we already had)
2 scrap cardboard boxes
2 wooden clothes pegs
Some nylon lanyard type stuff from the scrap drawer any strong hanging stuff would do.
A bit of old webbing with a buckle on.
A couple of angled metal brackets (depends what you want to hang it on)
A couple of over door brackets from my door gym (any over door type bracket would do for hanging on a door)
An 8" bit of thick wire from the inside of a mains cable that was in the scrap cupboard 


A kitchen knife to make holes and cut tape
Wire cutters and pliers
Scissors to cut cardboard


To begin I lay one of the boxes out flat and stuck my four mirrors along the bottom of the rectangle.
They are about 10" square so the box had to open out to around 40" wide.
2 fit side by side and 2 on the edges to be the flapped mirrors.
The object is to have two mirrors pretty much opposite each other so when looking into one, the user can see both sides or back and front of head at the same time.

Once I was sure my mirrors were stuck to the main box securely, I added a bit of reinforcement to the box edges with gaffer tape.

Then I took the second cardboard box.
This one was a laptop box that had been sitting on a shelf doing nothing.
The inside bits come out so it was just a question of sitting the one box into the other.

The flap top becomes the bottom flap of the hair station ,it hangs down when open.
The mirrored part shuts and the flap closes over it so it can be put away safely.

 I taped the two boxes all around, I was going to use contact adhesive but we didn't have any and it can be quite strong smelling anyway. It is cold and I wanted to stay in the warm .
I wanted a pocket in the flap down part so that I could put the hair scissors, comb etc in there when using them.
I made the pocket from the inside bits of the laptop box and taped it on.

I needed to be able to hang it all from a door or a drawer or maybe just hooks so I made small holes using a pointed  kitchen knife.
The holes go right through the back of both boxes so there are 2 thicknesses of cardboard and they are not too close to an edge so there is a good area to take any weight.

I also made a slot shape in the same way in the back part and one to correspond more or less on the lid when it is shut .
All the holes have tape wrapped around the inside edges so any chords or straps don't bite into the cardboard.

I used the angled over-door brackets from our door gym to hang the hair station.
These are just plastic brackets with a gnarled ring so it can be tightened.
There is an instructable for making over door brackets from old computer PCI slot covers that could work just the same.
I also added 2 metal brackets from our bits n pieces drawer that are just  3 sides of a rectangle in profile and have small holes in.
This second bracket is too small to hang over a door but hangs over a drawer quite well.
I threaded A bit of wire through the holes in the brackets made a loop to thread the lanyard through.


The wire needed tightening with pliers.
After threading the doubled over lanyard through the slots I knotted it
The knots stop the lanyard coming back out so the brackets can stay connected to it.

It hung up quite securely on the door.

The mirrored part needs to be at the users eye level so you can adjust how long the lanyard is once you hang it up.
Pegging the side flaps open against the box lid, stops the flaps closing and means you don't have to use your hands at all for getting the mirrors angled right.

The vertical slot can be used to hang in a different way if needs be. It needn't be hung on a door.
When it is closed, a strap through a slot in front and back of the box can be held like a handle to carry it.

Things I could improve.....
It isn't pretty.
It wouldn't have hurt to have the flap mirrors a little bit further out from the door so wider mirrors would work okay.
I might need to rethink the clothes peg idea for holding the side mirrors out but it works alright at the moment.
I have a little bit of foam to sit behind the cardboard on our bedroom door because it is a panel door, that helps keep it flat .

It does work though. 
I was able to cut my hair using scissors and comb and get the back neat .
When I did my fringe, the scissor pocket was useful for holding the thinning comb ,scissors and comb without me having to look for them every time I changed tool.