This bathroom was remodelled in 1957 according to the dates on the fixtures. So I didn’t mind changing things a bit as it wasn’t original anyway.
There was one cupboard space that didn’t make sense to me in the bathroom. There was a large space but only half of it was accessible from the door. You’d have to reach around blindly or get a ladder out and poke your head in it to see and get stuff hidden back there. I decided to cut an opening to gain easy access to the part I couldn’t reach easily. I wanted to close it off and make it two different storage areas. I started by scoring deeply into the plaster to make a neat rectangle. In this photo you can see I have some of the plaster off down to the lathing which will have to be cut back to the nearest 2×4.
I would open that wall about the same size opening as it had to the left side.
That space was about 20 inches deep.
There was a little space at the edge of the shelf and I put my camera looking down into the space and saw a place I could add additional storage. The following photo is looking down into the space under the shelf. The built-in drawers (at the top of the photo) are from the bedroom that shares the same wall as the bathroom. There are built in drawers on the left that are in the bathroom. I decided to open up the whole wall under the shelf.
That was no easy task getting the tiles off. There was some expanded metal backing that was very solid and took a lot of work to remove.
Below I’m removing that metal. Note the 5-1 tool I’m using. I’m hitting it with a hammer to break a clean cut at the corner all the way down.
Something I hadn’t noticed before that tiles came up to the bottom draw on the left which didn’t look right. It needed a wooden boarder around it so I took those tiles out, too. See bottom left of photo.
Below, I removed the backing that was behind the tiles below the drawers in order to add a wood border and keep it flush with the wall.
I cut all the lathing back to the nearest 2×4 and removed the plaster up to the nearest whole tile. You can see the built-in drawers in the opening. The drawers are from the bedroom that shares this same wall.
This shot shows the bathroom drawers going into the same space as the bedroom drawers coming from a different direction.
This shot shows all the plaster and lathe and tiles removed where I’m putting in the extra storage.
This is the top storage space. I screwed in a nailing strip on both sides to put in the divider.
The space is now divided and I cut some sheetrock to cover the lathing strips and taped and spackled it. I’m also filling in any gaps with latex spackle. I put in two shelves in the top section.
The space on top went back almost 20 inches. But when you get down to where it meets the drawers, I had 7 inches deep to work with. I made boxes with beadboard backing and screwed them between the 2x4s. I then used wood trim to cover the work and make it look finished. I bought some plywood and cut out the doors and rounded over the edges.
I have two videos below that shows the rest of the project. Click below to see how my project ended up.
