Master Bathroom Extra Cabinet

This page describes one of the phases of the multi-year Master Bathroom Remodeling Project.

Our master bathroom has a nice design feature of a curved wall. Embedded in that curved wall is a display shelf. On the other side is the shower/toilet alcove area with built in hamper. Looking at the block of wall that the curve makes and the size of the shelf and hamper, you can quickly surmise that there is a lot of wasted space behind the walls. More precise measurements confirmed this. Since you can never have too many cabinets in your bathroom, I wanted to utilize this empty space by adding a new cabinet. It naturally needed to look like all the exiating cabinets, since redoing the cabinets was not part of this remodeling project.

With such a large, empty space between the walls, one has to be curious what one might find. Hidden treasure? Dead bodies? Who knows.

Step one was to cut an exploratory hole. Something small so you could peer into it, but not large enough for any demons to escape. This was ant-climatic since there was nothing in here but confirmation that there was a lot of wasted space.

With all the wall board removed, this was a bit like an archeology project as it revealed some of the history of the house. It was clear that this curved wall, shelf and hamper area was added after the fact since the ceiling inside here had popcorn on it.

Building the cabinet frame was pretty straightforward and very similar to shelves I have made in the past. Four sides, dado slots for the shelves, glue and screw in the shelves and a thin plywood backing board to add some rigidity.

Being shelves and a cabinet, I would paint this with oil-based alkyd paint to add extra durability. I pre-painted the shelves to avoid the hassle and drips that come when your try to paint after assembly. The door was a simple rectangle and the trim pieces were also simple pieces.

The wall this cabinet was being installed in had an existing hamper at the bottom. This is the wall you stare at when you sit on the toilet. Over the years, this wall had grown to irritate me more and more. It was crooked. It was at an 87 degree angle to the other wall. The tiles on the floor helped to emphasize the crookedness and it was clear the tile installer had to make angled cuts to compensate.

With the wall mostly demolished, with a little more work I can could remove this source of irritation. I removed the hamper doors and cut away the excess wood so that I could re-install it all at the proper 90 degree angle. The world is now a better place, well worth the extra effort.