Snow days and Bathroom shelves

So here's the view from my back door right now.

Brr!

And the view from inside.

My snow bunny made me cinnamon rolls!

We've had 3 snow days lately. And me stuck in the house means me looking around trying to make things better.

And I've been staring at my front bathroom and comparing it to my newly renovated powder room. And the comparison is not favorable. So I've been making budgets, and plans and trying to convince myself to wait until spring break to start demo. 

In the meantime, there's a small project I can do to satisfy my handy itch and make my bathroom just a little bit better. 

Linens and things. 

Here's my linen cabinet in my front bathroom. It has this funny little middle door that opens downward. This design is very common in houses this age. The idea is that you put a laundry basket in the bottom cabinet, and then you can open the middle door and dump your dirty clothes in.

The problem with this particular design is that there is no way that a laundry basket is going to fit in the bottom cabinet. It's too small. So this is basically wasted space.

Wasted space is a luxury I can't afford in a 930 square foot house.

So, a shelf.

I measured the opening on the inside, and cut a scrap piece of plywood. There's a protrusion in the front of the cabinet that the shelf can sit on, but there's nothing to support it in the back. So I held up the shelf inside the space, and made sure it was level.

Can't be a bubble left of center.

I took my pencil and drew a line on the back of the cabinet along the bottom of the shelf.

Scraps!

A little bit of scrap quarter round with the flat side up will support the shelf on the back side. I tacked it in place with my new friend Brad.

Test fit!

Now all it needs is a coat of bright white paint to fit in with the rest of the cabinet, and voila! New storage.

Total budget? $0

Now let's see if I can get through the rest of this snow day without tearing up my bathroom.