Weekend Update

One of my biggest gripes with this house is the lack of built-in storage. The bathroom has no closet; the only storage in it is the very small under-sink cabinet. I'd been looking for one of those cabinets that are made to stand up over the back of the toilet, but I only had 23 inches of room, and most such cabinets are two feet or more. Then yesterday, whilst sneaking through Wal-Mart in the dead of early morning (the only safe time to go there), I discovered one that was 23.25 inches wide, and it looked like the extra quarter inch was from decorative pieces sticking out a bit from the sides, so I figured I could make it fit. I thought about going home and measuring again ... but there were only two such cabinets in the faux-oak finish—the rest were white—and the other oak one was an inch wider. So I looked over the design, decided if worst came to worst I could cut it up and force it to fit, and bought it.

...

Turned out I technically only had 22 inches of space there; I'd misremembered the measurement. However, part of that limitation came from assuming the cabinet would snug back against the wall, "inside" the boundary marked by the door-frame. This turned out to be impossible due to the floor, er, wainscotting (which is identical to the doorframe, but between the wall and the floor instead of between the wall and the door). There was no way the cabinet was going to snug against the wall. So I'm just letting it sit with one inch covering up part of the doorframe. It makes the doorway a bit crowded, but it more than doubled the storage space I'd had from a wall-mounted shelf; that had only two shelves, and they weren't nearly as wide as the wall-space. This has two full-width shelves, one full-width cabinet, and a solid top that I plan to use as a shelf.

So now I have to figure out what to do with the wall-mounted shelf and the toilet paper stand. I might be able to put the toilet paper stand in the downstairs bathroom, but I'd want to attach it to a wall this time. It's not made for that, but it's not too hard to find connective pieces that will support such things. I haven't decided about the wall-shelf yet.

Oh, there were two oddities in the instructions for putting the new shelf together. (1) In one place, it instructs you to attach the decorative cross-piece to the top of the unit. There are screw holes through the top, but no holes in the cross-piece. I skipped that and got the rest together ... and discovered that there were no screws leftover for such a connection, either. So I ignored that step. (2) On the last page, there are instructions for connecting a support strap between the top of the unit and the wall to keep it from tipping over. At the top of the page it reads, "It is imperative that unit be fastened to the wall for safety reasons." In the instructional picture, there's an arrow pointing to the screw being set into the wall, labeled "Not Included". ^/^ Also, there was no hole drilled in the top to accommodate even the one screw that was included. Now, I will often leave off the wall straps, but in this case, the unit is guaranteed to be top-heavy, so I just dug out an old screw and a drill and a stud-finder.