Introduction
If you’re short on bathroom storage space, this built-in cabinet could be just the ticket.This bath cabinet project is a great introduction to basic cabinet-building skills. It’s a simple box with a face frame attached to the front.You buy the doors in the style that best fits your bathroom décor and mount them to the face frame. We ordered the doors complete with 35mm holes to accept the concealed “euro-style” hinges. These hinges are great for novice cabinetmakers because they allow you to adjust the doors for a perfect fit.
Here, we’ll walk you through the entire cabinet assembly process. Then, we’ll show you how to cut a hole in your wall and safely remove a stud to create a recessed space for the thin bathroom cabinet. Even with little woodworking experience, you should be able to complete the cabinet in a day. Applying the finish and installing the cabinet will take another five or six hours.
You could cut the cabinet sides and face frame parts with a circular saw and saw guide, but you’ll get tighter-fitting joints if you use a power miter saw or a table saw with a miter gauge. We used a pocket hole jig and pocket screws to assemble the face frame pieces and attach it to the box. If you don’t own a pocket hole jig, glue and nail the face frame to the cabinet box with finish nails.
Including the doors, door glass and glass shelves, this cabinet cost us about $400. We faxed an order to the cabinet door company and received the doors in about three weeks. The cherry doors for this cabinet cost us about $160. Similar oak doors would cost about $135. We ordered the patterned glass ($60) and glass shelves ($10 each) from a local glass company. The Blum Compact 33 hinges and mounting plates are available by mail order and online.
We’ve listed sources in the Buyer’s Guide in Project PDF’s below.
Where to install a bathroom cabinet
Before you order doors or start building the cabinet, make sure you have a good spot to install the cabinet. Exterior walls are out. There’s likely to be insulation in them, and there may be structural issues to deal with as well. Look for a space that’s about 26 in.wide and 68 in. high. After you’ve found a potential location, use a stud finder to locate the studs, then mark them with masking tape. Position the cabinet so that you only have to remove one stud. You can put your cabinet at any height. The top of our cabinet lines up with the door, 80 in. above the floor.
Then make sure the spot you chose doesn’t have any hidden obstructions. The easiest method is to cut two 6-in. square inspection holes in the drywall, one on each side of the stud you’ll be removing. Then look in with a flashlight to make sure there aren’t any electrical wires, plumbing pipes or heat ducts in the way. A less invasive but also less thorough method is to poke a bent clothes hanger through a hole in the wall and probe around. You’ll have to do this in several places, though. If space is tight, you may have to adjust the cabinet dimensions to fit it in. When you’ve found a location, order the doors and hinges. If the door sizes are different from ours, adjust the cabinet sizes to fit them. The doors overlap the face frame 3/4 in. on all sides.
Click the links below to download the materials list as well as the drawings for this bath cabinet project.
Figure A Bath Cabinet, Wall Opening Shopping List and Cutting List
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7p63MoqOyoJGjsbq5wKdlnKedZL2zu8memq1nkqq2rcCMoqVmmpGptW6vwJugp52kZA%3D%3D