A new granite vanity top comes with one blaring dictate: “Don’t cover me up!” Granite is too beautiful (and expensive) to hide under clutter.
That makes adequate bathroom storage space a must. If you have more toiletries than the cabinets and drawers of your vanity can hold, consider building a medicine cabinet — or two. I built these cabinets into wall cavities on both sides of the vanity. They match the vanity base, and the three create a frame that shows off the granite.
If you’re short on bathroom storage space, here’s an eight-step plan for building medicine cabinets that match your vanity.
Step 1: Establish the medicine-cabinet dimensions; then cut holes in the drywall between studs (photo 1). A good rule of thumb: Cabinets should be roughly twice as tall as they are wide. Once you’ve determined the exact size of the cabinets, cut holes in the drywall and add framing for them. Also establish where to place electrical outlets (if desired) inside the cabinets. (These hidden outlets are convenient for plugging in electric toothbrushes, razors, hair dryers, etc.)
Step 2: Purchase hinges and shelving material. Choosing the type of hinges forces you to decide whether you want overlay, lipped or inset doors, which affects the exact size of the doors. If you plan to install glass shelves, order them as soon as you know the dimensions. Glass companies typically need a week or two to make shelves.
Step 3: Buy or build and finish the doors. An excellent article on building frame-and-panel doors appears in the February/March 2010 issue of HANDY (p. 24). You can also order doors from a cabinetmaker. I turned to Rockler Woodworking and Hardware, the same place I ordered doors, hinges and drawer fronts for the vanity. The company did an excellent job with the single-bead pattern on the vanity components, so it was a no-brainer to order matching medicine cabinet doors there (photo 2).
Once you have the doors, use a router to cut a groove along the bottom (photo 3 — note that the scrap of wood stops the path of the router). The groove serves as a finger grab for opening the door (photo 4). Stain the doors and apply polyurethane finish. (Some people recommend waiting until the end to apply finish, but I prefer to do it at this stage.)
Step 4: Build the cabinet frames. To save on the time and expense of finishing the inside of the cabinet, I used melamine book shelving and overstocked IKEA melamine cabinets. They were too big, but I disassembled them, ripped the sides to fit the dimensions I wanted and then glued and nailed the pieces together (photo 5). I used a jigsaw to create a cutout in one cabinet for an outlet (photo 6) and then installed backing (also from the IKEA cabinets). I cut the backing to fit and nailed it to the back of the cabinets. Finally, after sliding the cabinets into place, I nailed them to the framing.
Step 5: Add shelves (photo 7). To determine the height of the shelves, decide what you will store in each cabinet. Then drill holes for the shelf supports and place the shelves on the supports.
Step 6: Build simple face frames. I stained and finished 1/4-in. oak strips, butted them together and nailed them to the wall so that they covered the outside edges of the cabinets.
Step 7: Install hinges and hang the doors. Before mounting European-style hinges, first practice on scrap wood to see how the hinges are assembled. Then create the hinge-cup holes using a 35mm-dia. Forstner bit to bore 1/2-in.-deep holes. Make sure the hinge arms are square to the door edge. Mount the hinges, hang the doors and check the fit.
Step 8: Fine-tune the doors. You may have to use sandpaper to ease any edges that rub; then touch up the sanded spots with finish. To keep the doors from banging against the face frames, install bumpers at the corners opposite the hinges (see photo 4).