Reclaimed Bathroom Caddy
by
Janglin28
5 Materials
A small house needs to take advantage of any storage opportunity, but that doesn't mean it can't add to the décor.
We had some wood sitting out in our backyard. It was sitting out in our previous backyard and maybe the one before that. It was my husband’s old bachelor futon, dismantled and stacked like firewood. My husband refuses to dispose of any wood, which I used to find quite irritating, but now that I have been doing a bit of crafting myself I have found quite a bit of this wood useful. The nice thing about old wood that has been sitting out in the weather is the beautiful patina that it acquires. It is something that we try to duplicate with paint, but really isn’t quite the same.
This is two of the pieces from the futon. They were only lightly sanded to remove the grime from sitting outside for so long. The oak now has this lovely gray color. The screw holes at the top are from where the futon was attached together, but I liked the way it looked and decided to leave them.
I then propped up the slats on each side of the toilet, decided how wide I wanted the unit to be, and where I wanted the rails and the baskets by using clamps to keep things in place. Then the cross slats were cut to this measurement. The area fit about three cross bars with enough room to get things in and out of the baskets fairly easily.
After much swearing at the wood’s refusal to cooperate and square properly, we finally got everything lined up to attached the cross bars. We used a small but square plywood remnant as an assembly table that allowed us to keep pieces right to one another during assembly.
These were done by predrilling, including a countersink for the short, black deck screws. My husband inserted two screws in a diagonal pattern that really looks great.
While still on the workbench, we attached the baskets with screws to the positions that I decided would work best.
I also decided to attach a vintage, brass coat hook that I got from my grandmother when I was just a kid to one of the vertical side rails for an additional hand towel, scrubby, or whatever else one might need a hook for.
The final product has turned out to be functional, but I like the way it looks. I can now reach from the shower to the shelf to get a new razor, shampoo, soap, or anything else that I remembered to place there, but forgot before I got into the shower. I decided not to seal the wood, and I am hoping that the humidity will not damage it. We make sure that our bathroom is well ventilated. The hurricane lantern has an L.E.D. candle in it from the dollar store. It takes AA batteries.
Comments
Join the conversation
3 of 40 comments
-
Love it ! Very industrial and lots of space for storage and very organized 😀
-
Good idea. I don't like the prefab white ones because things fall off the shelves and end up in the toilet. I really like the baskets because the stuff inside can't fall out of the baskets. Thanks for sharing.
-
I never cared for the white ones because you are very style limited with them. When building it yourself you can do anything.
-
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
How do you attach it to the wall? I’m afraid to screw into my trailer walls. That bathroom looks about the size of mine, not very big at all.