Toilet Room Cabinet

[Todd Burch]

I have been remodeling our master bathroom this year, a piece at a time. Our master toilet room was pretty stark, and our master bath, in general, was pretty shy of any kind of storage areas. I decided to make this cabinet, against the wife's wishes, but she does like it now.

It's walnut, with a red mahogany stain, sprayed with satin lacquer. I chose a satin black lacquer for the interior, as I already had it queued up in the other gun for another project I am spraying.

Cabinet is 31 3/8" wide and 35 5/8" tall, 7 1/4" deep. It took about an hour and a half to make the box, and about 2 hours to dress and make the face frame. I made the doors earlier this year when I was making the master bath vanity cabinets, and I miss-cut the panels too short... thus, the idea for this cabinet.

I had to use a pretty wide angle to get these shots. The bathroom walls are a blue color, but at the top, they show beige due to the lighting. Kinda weird.

It'll hold a lot of paper.

Todd

[gary triplett]

Beautiful job, very handy and in a good place above the toilet. Thanks for the pics.

[Jason Saiki]

Great job and thanks for sharing. I'm looking in doing the same thing during my Christmas vacation. If mines comes out half as good as yours, I'll be a happy camper.

[Brett Bobo]

Well done, Todd! Also, the finish turned out beautifully! I like how you subdivided each door panel into two, instead of just one panel per door. Did you scribe the stiles to the adjacent walls? If so, what was your procedure to get the tight fit? For example, did you scribe each stile separately before glue up and assembly?

Also, I noticed in a photo from your post on the garage cabinet that you have recessed lighting. Is this your primary lighting source? Do you get good coverage as compared to say strip, fluorescent lights? I've considered this before since it's a fairly inexpensive alternative to strip lights but I was unsure about how well these light a shop without a large number of them, say spaced at 4' apart. Thanks for the insight.

[Todd Burch]

Thanks Gary, Jason and Brett.

@Brett, I didn't scribe, I just made it tight. The walls are parallel enough. I installed it while the blue paintbrush was still wet, so the scrapes on the walls from it being tight fitting were quickly repaired. It actually was a bit loose on first test-fit (before finishing), so I glued ~1/8" strips to each stile's outside edge, and that made for a tight fit. I considered caulking it in and painting the caulk, but the fit came out pretty tight, and I was happy with the look & fit as it was, more than I would have been happy with my caulk and painting of the caulk. ;)

You can't see it in the pictures, but the face frame is wider than the cabinet box itself. I knew I would have to angle the cabinet into place, so I used Sketchup to determine how wide the box could be and still allow me to angle the whole thing in. Worked like a charm.

When I was planning lighting for the garage/shop, I had planned to install about $700 worth of T-8 fluorescent lighting, daylight color temp, all over. But, then my neighbor's house burnt down and I got the pickings of anything I wanted. So, I grabbed all the non-melted recessed cans, a toilet, a 3.5 ton A/C unit, yards and yards of 6 gauge wire, and a multitude of "still good but a little black" studs.

I'm happy with the cans. I've supplemented the reclaimed cans with 9 or more new ones, but I could still use more. Floods are better than spots. They are installed where I needed light when the shop was configured a certain way. It's now configured a bit different, but the lighting still works. I do have a few task-lighting fixtures here and there over the tablesaw and workbench I've picked up in garage / estate sales and on ebay.

Todd