We remodeled our downstairs washroom. There was no drywall on the ceiling and it was long overdue for a new paint job. All of the pipes are exposed, which reminds me of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Not quite as grand, but you get the idea.
After I hung the drywall and spackled, I painted everything with a white latex paint. Kristy and I decided on a coral-ish color for the ducts and pipes. I taped of the wall behind the pipes, which took forever. There’s probably 3 coats of coral.
However, the wall opposite was a void. With the size of this room, we didn’t want something on the floor cluttering the area, so it made sense to mount a shelf-cubby-drying rack. We could store laundry D, towels, assorted toiletries, etc. Basically everything.
I got to work on a 3D model. Here is the final version and exploded into it’s parts. I love doing it this way because then I know exactly how much lumber to buy. It also doubles as a blueprint during build time.
I went with cheaper 1 x 12 pine because premium pine was crazy $$$. It would be painted anyway, so there wasn’t a reason to dump a bunch of money into nice grain.
I decided to use tongue and groove joints on this project (at lease I think that is what these are). I don’t have a dado blade, so I dusted off my radial arm saw and made like 6 passes to get the groove. It took a while, but it worked great.
After shaping the vertical sides, I drilled the holes for the 1″ dowels that would be the drying rack. I’ve been using the tape method on the spade bit for a while now to eyeball the depth of the cut.
After all of the pine was ripped, I laid out the pieces and did a dry fit.
Clamps! I used regular Titebond II and a handful of finishing nails.
There is a little shelf under the cubbies that we can put small objects like bars of soap and little quarter machine figurines. Because this is considerable weight, I decided to mount it using a French cleat, which you can see along the top on the backside.
I put on 2 coats of latex primer then 3 coats of “Austin Red” (not coral).
Although you can’t see it, I drilled the other side of the French cleat into the studs. With Kristy’s help, we lowered the shelf onto the cleat. If we ever need to move the shelf, we can simply lift it off.
So that’s that. I want to add another color to the bathroom, which I think will be black. We didn’t intentionally go for the firehouse vibe, but that’s ok. If you didn’t know what a fire station was, you wouldn’t think that it looked like it.
