Creating storage in utility room wall cavities

Each bathroom/utility-room has a paneled wall with one hinged door that allows access to the toilet cistern. Above the cistern is a large void and a common project is to turn this space into a storage area. It's worth concidering how you can mainting accesibility to the plumbing while providing an effective storage soloution.

Wall Mounted Shelving
One simple soloution is to fix some wall mounted shelving to the rear wall of the cavity.

It might not be possible to attach a shelving unit directly to the wall as there could be pipes and other fixings in the way. It might be possible to work around them or to cover them up with a large piece of board and then attach the shelving to that board.

One common problem with this soloution is that items can easiy fall off the shelves into the cavity space.

Removable Shelf Unit
Another solution is to construct a whole shelving unit that can be easily removed from the cavity when required.

Below is an example of such a design.


 * The main unit and shelves were constructed out of 15mm white melamine faced chipboard, while the backing was a piece of 3mm white hardboard. It's just a simple box design, with the edges joined with dowel reinforced butt joints and the pack panel attached with panel pins. Some plastic shelf supports were attached on the inside panels to support the sheving.


 * So that the unit can be easily removed, the design had to take into account the hindges of the cavity door. Some extra white chipboard was used to create spacers, allowing the unit to sit away from the hinges. The entrance to the cavity itself was found to be wider at the top than the bottom, so the spacers were adjusted to compensate for this.


 * While in place, the unit is supported at the front by sitting on the bottom edge of the panel door's frame and at the rear by sitting on top of a piece of wood attached to the rear wall. Some blocks of wood were attached higher up on the rear wall, to space the unit away from some of the plumbing. The unit was then attached to the panels frame with a two of screws though each side; removing these four screws allows you to easily pull out the whole unit.


 * The main issues we ran into:


 * The frame for the panel door is not square and is wider at the top than the bottom.
 * The top hinge appears to touch the frame when closed leaving the door slightly open. A magnetic latch should fix this.
 * The chipboard was cut using a circular saw and chipped the melamine. We should of used a finer toothed blade. We covered up the rough edges with some white decorators sealant.


 * It took about a day for two of us to build and install the unit. The total construction cost was about £40.