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Often there are problems with a place to store household chemicals. All sorts of powders, cleaners, rinses … There are more and more of them, and usually there is nowhere to store them. The bathroom is too humid, the kitchen is not too pleasant, as they can spread extraneous aromas, which are poorly combined with cooking, or rather, they do not fit well. However, there is a way out – a closet in the toilet. Although the toilet is usually a small room, you can also find free space in it – above or behind the toilet. This is where you can hang / install a toilet cabinet.
What material to make
When they decide to make a closet in the toilet, the question immediately arises of what material to make it from. If we talk about furniture, there are such options:
- laminated chipboard (LDSP);
- laminated MDF;
- wood.
The cheapest material in this category is chipboard. MDF is four times more expensive and wood is even more expensive. If you assemble doors from a cut board or lining with your own hands, this may not be more expensive than MDF. But such work requires at least a minimum carpentry skill. If not, you will have to pay for the work of a specialist, which can significantly increase the final cost of the product.
If the locker is going to be tiled, covered with wallpaper, vinyl, plastic, you can use materials other than those listed above:
- plywood;
- GVL (gypsum fiber sheet);
- OSB;
- sheet MDF.
All of the materials listed are quite suitable for building a locker in the toilet. The only doubt may be about GVL: will it crumble at the place where the loops are attached? If large loads are not expected, it is quite possible to use this material.
Now the question is whether to use moisture resistant materials. The closet in the toilet can be made of ordinary material, provided that it is only a toilet, and not a combined bathroom, i.e. there will be no high humidity in the room. An exception is the situation when the ventilation of the bathroom is done with the help of an overflow window through the toilet. Such schemes still exist in houses with the old layout. In all other situations, the use of moisture resistant materials is optional.
False wall and niche
In most apartments, the toilet is a narrow and long room. Its width is about a meter, its length is two meters or more. Such a long room is inconvenient to use – the area up to the door is still not used in any way. You can improve the situation by installing a false wall. At the same time, the toilet bowl can be moved forward, and 50-60 cm can be fenced off with a partition. The remaining space is more than enough for comfort, and the one that turns out to be “outside the wall” can be used as a closet.
Sewer and water risers will hide behind this false wall, which otherwise will have to be covered with a special box. The space behind the toilet does not have to be sewn up tightly. Here you can make a very spacious closet. It can store powders, stocks of other chemicals, which are usually hard to find a place.
For the device, you will have to move the toilet bowl forward, nail the strips to the walls and ceiling (40 * 40 mm will be quite normal), fill the horizontal strips that will hold the shelves. Doors for such a cabinet in the toilet are attached directly to the walls. Or rather, to the slats that are fixed on the wall.
The plank is needed 8 cm wide. Since it will be visible when the doors are open, it is desirable that it be finished with the same material as the doors. It is fastened with nails / screws / dowels to the wall, and loops to it.
Closet in the toilet from floor to ceiling (or almost)
A closet for a toilet room can be a separate piece of furniture. It has a characteristic design that cannot be confused with anything. At the bottom, the closet in the toilet has two narrow and high cabinets, which stand at a distance of 50-60 cm from each other. Above them there is one or two sections with or without doors. These are already solid sections with hinged doors.
The parameters of these cabinets depend on the dimensions of the room. You will not see such products in stores, only an individual order. From the same laminated chipboard it will not be too expensive, and there is a lot of space for storing chemicals.
There are models that are more economical in terms of using space: in the lower part there are only supports-racks, open and closed shelves are located above the toilet bowl.
The above option is good when the load-bearing capacity of the walls is not sufficient to support conventional wall shelves. If you have a partition made of drywall, porous or lightweight concrete, you can look in this direction.
Wall cabinets
Above the toilet, you can hang a regular wall cabinet of suitable width and height. It can be part of the kitchen or part of the hallway. In any modular collection you can find a suitable sample. You only have to cut holes in the back wall for sewer and water risers, but this alteration is not difficult.
If you’re worried that the exposed cut might be damaged by moisture, you can take a self-adhesive melamine furniture edge and rub the cuts with it. A simpler option is painting or coating with a water-repellent sealant.
The height of the cabinet above the toilet can be different. As you can see in the photo above, you can hang different models – on two or three shelves (total height of about 70 cm) or on five to seven shelves (total height is obtained from a meter or more). The most important condition is the cabinet must not block the ventilation opening. The second point: it should not interfere. That is, there should be access to the flush button, and while sitting on the toilet, you should not beat your head against the door. Based on these considerations, they select the dimensions of the wall cabinet in the toilet. Since the parameters of the toilet bowl, cistern and installation of the entire structure are different, the depth of the cabinet can be from 35 to 60 cm.
What to make doors
If you decide to make a closet for the toilet yourself, it’s usually not a problem to make shelves: two parallel planks are stuffed on the walls, shelves are laid on them. Instead of planks, you can install furniture shelf holders – they are of different sizes and shapes, they are installed elementarily. A hole is drilled in the wall, into which the extended part of the holder is inserted. This is one type. The second is the brackets that are attached to the wall. In general, there are usually no problems in this part.
But with what and how to make doors, there may be questions. The easiest way is to order a facade of the right size in a furniture shop. It is better to order together with the strips to which these doors will be attached. And you can also ask to embed loops. Then it will be easy to install them in general: screw them to the wall and that’s it. Possible facade materials: chipboard, LMDF, plastic, aluminum + glass or aluminum + plastic.
There is an option – to make doors from sheet material and paste over them with the same tiles that were laid on the walls. This is in case you don’t want the closet to stand out. You can also stick a mosaic of a suitable shade, use flexible tiles (plastic sheet for tiles), stick washable wallpaper, glass wallpaper for painting, etc. There are actually a lot of options.
You can also not make doors, but hang ordinary horizontal blinds, use roller blinds of the right color and size. This is one of the easiest and cheapest options. To gain access to the shelves, you will need to raise the blinds or roller blinds.
A more serious and durable option is to close the shelves in the toilet with a roller shutter. It is more serious in terms of costs and complexity of installation. It will be necessary to install guides and fix the drum at the top.