Scrap Wood Project - Toilet Paper Cabinet

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If you’ve been here a while you know I love a built-in! I’ve been dreaming up ways to organize my bathroom better as I’ve been remodeling it. We normally buy those large packages of toilet paper and we only have so many places to store it, I don’t want to store it in the garage or somewhere away from the bathroom where it’s hard to get to or some place we’d forget about it and end up buying more. Well one day it clicked! There is just enough space in our master bathroom water closet for a low profile cabinet with enough space to house our toilet paper and other bathroom supplies! I went out to my garage to see what kind of scrap wood I had left over from other projects and I found I had just enough wood to make this an almost free project! The only things I needed to buy were a few 1x3x8 primed pine and the hinges for the doors, the rest I had on hand! I love a good scrap wood project! My built-in bar was also mostly a scrap wood project, the only thing I needed to buy for that was the brown board for the upper half and the handles for the doors.

I got to work ripping down the scrap pieces of 1/2in plywood I had on my small table saw. Do as I say and not as I do, it is NOT a good idea to stand over your table saw like I’m doing here, but it was raining outside and I was short on space so this is how I made it work. This cabinet will be about 5-6 inches deep.

Then I cut them all down to size with my miter saw. This cabinet is going to be pretty much the same size on all sides. I wanted it to come a little below the canvas pictures I already had hanging on the wall and still have a few inches on either side of it.

Then I brought it all inside and started putting it together with wood glue and my brad nailer. This cabinet isn’t going to be holding a lot of weight and it’s going to be pretty small so I didn’t feel it necessary to screw anything together, especially with 1/2in plywood. Plus wood glue is pretty dang strong! I put the outside together first.

Then I added the 2 shelves evenly spaced apart, again with wood glue and 1 inch brad nails.

Once that was done I built a base for the cabinet using left over 1×3 poplar because I wanted to add baseboards to the bottom so I needed it to be setting up off the ground.

Then I test fit it to make sure it was going to fit. My process here was to set the cabinet in place and leave it there for a few weeks (procrastination?) to make sure it wasn’t going to be in the way or make anyone stub their toes in the middle of the night.

I built this in the middle of November and I didn’t work on it any more till the middle of December. The holiday season is busy and after my first bout of motivation to randomly build this I procrastinated a few weeks! Once I was ready to finally see this come to life, I got to work measuring to make sure it would be centered.

Then I marked where the base would go and I used my multi tool to cut the baseboard so I could remove it to allow the cabinet to sit flush against the wall. I have a few tools to remove baseboards and trim and I love this simple handy dandy tool that makes it easy for quick projects, I have this one when I have a lot of trim to remove.

I cleaned up my mess and then test fit the base.

The base fit perfect so I test fit the cabinet.

Before installing it I added edge banding so that way the plywood looked like a solid piece of wood and not plywood. Edge banding really helps elevate a piece of furniture! It’s those smaller details that really make it look professional and not like a DIY. Edge banding has an adhesive on the back of it that activates with heat, so you just iron it onto the edge. You can see below where the right side has edge banding and the middle shelves don’t yet.

Once that is all ironed on you cut the excess off with a razor knife, they make a tool to remove it but last time I tried to use it it didn’t work for me, could have been user error, but a fresh razor works just fine. You can set it on a scrap piece of wood to cut it off or you can do like me and set it on the concrete garage floor. You might need to go over it with a razor a couple of times to make sure you cut all the way through. Once the excess is removed you can just go over it with some fine grit sand paper to take away any rough edges.

Then I secured the base into the studs with some 2 inch starhead screws (my favorite!). I upgraded my stud finder last year and this new one is amazing! It works really well, the red lights show exactly where the stud is.

I added the cabinet back on to the base and nailed the cabinet into the base and used some L brackets to secure the cabinet to the wall. I had a leftover piece of wood from Mia’s loft bed we took down (more on that in a future post) and I used that for the top of this cabinet.

Then I built some doors using 1×3 primed pine cut down to size and put them together with pocket holes after I routed the inside edges with for the brown board to sit inside. Yes, I use goggles instead of glasses so sawdust can’t get in my eyes! Tyler makes fun of me but they work so much better than safety glasses!

If you use pocket holes often you should think about investing in a Kreg Foreman, this thing is amazing and makes building furniture or cabinets sooo much easier and faster! If you don’t use them often this smaller Kreg Jig will do just fine.

Before I added the centers to the doors and got them painted I wanted to make sure they were going to work right, so I added the holes for the hinges using my Kreg Jig and test fit them. I’ve never installed doors that open downwards like this so I wanted to make sure everything opened right.

They all worked great with about 1/16 of a gap in-between each door! You can’t really tell if I don’t point it out but the doors aren’t all the same size because of the way they open, which is okay with me! It’s because the shelves are exactly evenly spaced out so the doors can’t be the same size because of the space at the top and I didn’t realize that until the cabinet was built and installed. They are close though. I installed the brown board using wood glue alone and let it dry with some weight sitting on it.

I routed the outsides of the doors with a decorative router bit that I use on a lot of my doors and then added decorative trim to the inside using construction adhesive and a clamp to hold it in place while it dried. I also had this trim left over from a different project, I had just the right amount and even had to join two pieces together because I didn’t have one piece long enough for the last spot on the doors, if that makes sense.

I used my trusty Graco paint sprayer and sprayed the doors Alabaster by SW once the glue was all dry. I did not caulk these doors but I could have. The Graco sprayer is another tool to invest in if you would use it often, this sprayer out performs all the other spacers I’ve used! You don’t have to thin your paint, the finish goes on SO smooth, it’s cordless and it’s just overall amazing for small to medium projects! I’ve even used it to spray a ceiling before and my guest rooms board and batten and it worked amazing!

Paint is seriously magic!

I got the doors put back on and was so excited to see this cabinet start to look pretty! And no, I didn’t paint the back of the cabinet doors. I may one day but I’ll be honest, I was in a hurry and didn’t get it done. I have other cabinet doors in my house like this and it doesn’t bother me….too much. Just ignore the fact that I’m sitting on the toilet here, it’s just so convenient!

Then it was time for the fun part! Picking hardware! I had some left over from other projects and I thought I’d go with the antique gold knobs I had but I ended up loving the other pulls I had better! Even my audience on Instagram agreed for the most part! Bonus, they are easier to install than the knobs.

I added baseboards, I had those left over too because I have them all throughout my house. I did have to rip the baseboard down a bit to be shorter than the rest of my baseboards but I was okay with that, I don’t think it looks out of place. I still hadn’t filled the nail holes at this point.