Behind the Door Shelf

Installing a narrow shelf behind a door is a great way to utilize that otherwise dead space to store necessities or décor, especially in a small bathroom where we have to store so many small products.

Given that storage was scarce inside the vanity in this, my kid's bathroom, the idea of building a shelf to go right there behind the door was my next step on this small bathroom makeover.

This is how the bathroom looked at the start of this makeover, a mirror in the center to fill that empty space. The other mirror on the left is the medicine cabinet, with storage behind it. So that one needs to stay.

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My last project in this bathroom was to paint this geometric stenciled design. 

For complete instructions on how to create the stencil and paint this design click HERE.

LET'S BUILD THE SHELF! 

The general dimensions for my shelf are: 54"x 22"x 3.5"

TOOLS & MATERIALS:

• 1 X 4 x 16' Pine or Poplar board
• Saw
• Drill
• 1-1/4" screws
• Nailer
• Wire shelving track
• 4 Mending plates

The shelf design included a space to store magazines, little compartments for my daughter to display the soaps she likes to use, and in general small spaces to store products and/or decorative items.

The first step is to cut your wooden material according to your storage needs.

The material I used was 1x4 poplar.  Even though they call them 1x4, the exact measurement for these boards is 3/4" thick x 3.5" wide.  You can also use the 1x3 if your space behind the door is smaller.

The beauty of building it yourself is that you can customize it to your own needs!

For connecting the inside shelves a nail gun was used.

For the mainframe, I used the Kreg jig to open pocket holes. However, you can simply drive the 1-1/4" screws straight from the outside and into the connecting board.

This shelf is not going to hold major weight. That's still a strong connection.

After completely assembling the shelf, it was time to fill the nail holes with putty and give it a light sanding.

Then, I removed any dust particles before spray painting it with this striking color! As orange is one of the accent colors in the bath.

The final part was to place some bars to keep the magazines in place.  For that task, I used a shelving track that I bought at HD for under $3.  A 72" strip was used (they are the ones you used on shelves to hold the shelves in place).

To hang the shelf onto the wall I made sure it was screwed to at least one stud on the wall, for the other side I used anchors.  One of these plates was installed on each of the four corners:

And here are the final pics:

I like how well the metallic strips holding the magazines go with the wall design.

The orange and blue combo gives a splash of energy to this, the kid's bath!

These cactuses were in my kid's bedrooms, I "stole" them, changed the containers for these pretty cans from the dollar store that I spray painted.  Btw, that's the only kind of plant that has survived in their rooms.

The WASH letters from Michael's $1.50 each.  My son keeps on re-arranging the letters so it reads MASH, SHAM, HAMS, and he thinks it's so funny!

My daughter's pretty and smelly soaps look so nice up there!

A very easy to construct shelf that gives you storage and when the door closes it becomes art ;)

Click HERE to see the complete bath makeover.