New Corner Cabinet

Last summer, or when ever it was, I found an old Hoosier style bin cabinet in a dumpster parked out in front of a small 1880s bungalow down the street from me. It was in kind of rough shape but still had some life in it so I snagged and it’s been sitting in my dining room ever since.



At first I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it but I quickly decided it would make a nice dirty clothes hamper for the downstairs bathroom. As it turned out, the bathroom was too small to incorporate the bin in the room, but I figured I could add the bin to a built-in cabinet just outside the bathroom door in the little mud room.

This solved two problems. First, I would have a place to drop dirty clothes after I came out of the bathroom. As I’ve learned over the last few months, this is a much needed item. I’m a very lazy person at heart, so making the 10 yard walk from the bathroom, through the kitchen, through the butler’s pantry, and in to the proposed laundry room would be too much for me. No, the clothes would, and in fact have, ended up sitting on the floor of the bathroom until I get sick of looking at them, or until guests are expected, which ever comes first.

The other problem solving nature of the bin has to do with the beadboard that will be covering the rest of the mud room. I have a bunch of 9.5 foot long pieces of beadboard that I want to use to cover the walls of the mudroom. It already has a beadboard ceiling and I thought it would be very cool to have a complete room of beadboard.

The beadboard was originally installed in the scullery, which is now the downstairs bathroom. If it was all in good shape it would be just barely enough to finish the mud room. The problem is, it is far from being all in good shape. The scullery had at least two different sinks installed, and what may have been a water heater. This lead to several holes of varying diameters being drilled in to the beadboard.

By installing a built-in corner cabinet to house the bin I no longer need as many 9.5 foot lengths of beadboard. There will be no beadboard behind then bin. I can now pick and chose from the best pieces to finish the rest of the room.

Kitchen on the left and bathroom on the right




As it turned out, the bin really didn’t fit in the mud room all that well either. Calling it a mud room is a bit of a stretch. The room is only 4X5.5 feet. Three walls have doors on them and the 4th has a window. After playing around with it, I decided a corner cabinet was the only way to go. So over the last few days I built the built-in and fixed up the bin. It works very well. Now I can start to put the rest of the beadboard in the room. After that’s all in I can make templates for the marble top of this built-in and the one in the bathroom. And with that, the bathroom will finally be done.