Nobody puts laundry in a corner

Hello all. By now regular readers understand this renovation's fascination with converting standard kitchen or bathroom cabinets into furniture. This time we got a bit more ambitious.

Turning the third bathroom into a laundry room left us with an odd shape. Where once a shower stall stood we wanted to put something to maximize the storage. At first we tried those wire bookshelves that are sturdy and can hold a good weight. 

That didn't quite cut it, but when we looked for more of an armoire nothing had the right dimensions. We decided to make our own and started with two standard wall cabinets from Home Depot because they were the right width for the space.

What they were not, however, was the right depth. That's when we reversed our previous method of narrowing a cabinet. As usual, the first step was to make a straight cut all around the sides.

These types of cabinets all have double rows of holes for pegs that hold the shelves. We made sure to cut between them so they'd still be usable. We knew we wanted to add three inches to the depth and used some plywood of the same width to fill the gap.

That left us with this. We had metal braces we attached at the ends of each side that would hold the side pieces together. We did something the same on the top and bottom, using some strips of 3/4-inch wood that we cut to fit.

Here you can see the cross pieces of wood and at the far end you can see the metal brace. If you're curious about the discoloration of the inserts we added to the sides, our plywood was almost the same width so we had to run the inserts vertically through the table saw a couple times to shave off maybe 1/32 of an inch.

We needed a way to attach the cabinets, the top, and the feet, so we added spacers in all of the corners. We would be able to put long screws down through the corners to hold the parts together (without collapsing the shelf floor) and up into the top. These also gave us a base to which we could attach the feet.

As we stood them on top of each other, we started to have a sense for what the finished product would look like.

Then we turned to making the top. There was one floor board that didn't fit the others. It was much too yellow but otherwise a nice piece of lumber. We cut five pieces at the desired length, glued them together (with clamps in the bottom picture), and nailed a piece of scrap wood underneath that would also hold everything together.

Then came the time for final assembly. With the pieces clamped in place we drove screws through the corners.

Here's the side before paneling (but with feet)...

...and after.

Here's where it stands now, ready for painting when we can turn back to this project. We also cut a couple pieces of our 3/16-inch luan boards for the bottoms of each cabinet to cover up the inserts.

Obviously this entry's title was inspired by this legendary scene. You're welcome.

Until next time.