Bathrooms · Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey

A tidier downstairs toilet

Storage for a narrow downstairs toilet, with 45 degree doors that show the ply edge.

The toilet storage unit closed, with a birch ply top — Closed.

One of the angled doors open showing toilet rolls inside — Open, with the ply edge showing.

WhereOur house, Staines

Made forOur own family

Materials18 mm melamine-faced birch ply

Worth knowingA reworked version of the Streatham design

When we moved to Staines, the downstairs toilet had a ceramic toilet with space around it and a single shelf on the side for toilet rolls. It wasn't a good use of the room. I was redoing it anyway, so I stripped it out, did the tiling and plumbing, and fitted a new toilet.

The cut birch ply parts laid out on the floor ready to assemble — The parts, cut and ready to go together.

For the storage I went back to the unit I'd designed for our Streatham bathroom and reworked it. This room is narrow, the unit sits between two walls, and it had to allow for the skirting board, so it's been resized and redesigned rather than copied. It's 18 mm melamine coated birch ply with doors cut at 45 degrees, and behind them there's space for toilet rolls, hand towels, spare soap and the toilet brush. Everything the room needs has a place.

Door open on the side cupboard with spare toilet rolls — Spare rolls and the brush, out of sight.

Concealed hinge fixed into the birch ply edge — The hinge sits into the ply edge.

The main point was making it easy to clean, and it is. But I still enjoy opening the doors and seeing the ply edges. A couple of plywood shelves finish the room off, and their edges work really well against the blue scalloped tiles.

Plywood shelves beside the basin against blue scalloped tiles — The plywood shelves beside the basin.

Close-up of a plywood shelf edge against the tiles — The shelf edge against the tiles.

Got a space like this one?

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