GODMORGON!

Shaaaawing! Another IKEA post, imagine that.

We really needed more storage in the bathroom. For a long time now, I’ve been trying to figure out how and where we could store extra stuff, especially medicine that could land in the hands of a child, and by “a long time” I mean a very short 5-6 months. It all started when I bought what I thought was killer birch sliding door storage unit off of fab.com but what arrived was two very pretty powder-coated storage doors sans storage unit which, turns out, was all I really ordered in the first place. The photo selling the product was just the pretty doors in their natural environment, showing how great they looked if you already owned the very costly but modern unit. DRAT. Could there even be a louder whompity-whomp-whomp?

I didn’t even get around to telling you guys about that fudge-up that happened sometime back over the summer in the height of my fab-mania, I’ve just been brewing and scheming up ways to put those doors to use, and, only because it’s relevant, until just this weekend I had a grand ol’ plan of making my own simple dovetailed box with with a dado notch that the doors could glide easily from side-to-side and conseal the necessary higher-up storage that we needed (particularly, I’m talking about things that should be out of reach of kids). I might still do that, but not today, because instead, we went to IKEA. I hadn’t planned on getting anything storage related at IKEA, but as we browsed the showroom we spotted these units from the GODMORGON series, they kind of found us. And I proceeded to take a photo of it whilst walking by at what appears to be 10 mph.

The storage units came in two widths, one with a single door, and one with a double. The larger one was 24″ wide, only about 1/3 wider than the smaller one, but still narrow enough to fit into the space above our toilet.

So we bought it.

It was sold in several finish options which affected the price, including a oak that didn’t match the rest of the bathroom and a brown-black that normally I’d have gravitated to, but we settled on glossy white because in reality, the toilet, the subway tiles, the sink top, and the bathtub are all glossy white and we hoped optimistically that it’d look right at home. I really love our clean, bright bathroom and that glossy, glossy white just adds to the illuminating effect, but glossy gray and glossy red were sexy too if you’re looking for more daring options.

Like any IKEA furniture it came in a flat box, so I assembled it at home, and then watched Pete awkwardly try and hold it over the toilet to level it and mark an appropriate height for installation.

We used heavy duty anchor bolts to secure it to the wall over the toilet, the perfect alternative if you can’t find a stud or don’t feel like trying to find one.

Sure, with anchor bolts you’ll have to drill a slightly bigger hole into the wall to accomodate the anchor, but it’s worth it in the end because that toggle will clamp on to the backside of the drywall securely, and that baby isn’t going anywhere. I think ours will hold 200 lbs, and is not that blurry in person. The white donut is a spacer that sits behind the cabinet, it came with our IKEA hardware kit, but the bolts did not.

It was an immediate improvement that called for us to “cheers” our coffee cups.

The doors fit on easily, although if you’re doing this install at home you’ll have to get a hang of how to adjust the hinges to make the doors both level, and set to close in close proximity of each other for that clean-lined effect. A small, tedious price to pay for an awesome, clean-lined cabinet.

It doesn’t sit far off the wall at all and is especially perfect for the inset area over the toilet; the shelves are very shallow but still enough to accomodate pretty much all that we had been trying to cram in the space beneath our bathroom sink. Drugs, shampoo, extra bars of soap, lotions, potions, the works. Note: It’s ever so slightly too narrow to hold our current brand of toilet paper. Might be time to downsize to a less cushy brand for mere storage convenience.

The shelves themselves are tempered glass which can hold a lot more weight than ordinary glass. Each piece is very thick too, and with five shelves (including the base of the cabinet), it’s clear that we’ll be able to store a lot.

It’s the perfect match of form and function for our small bathroom. And if you’re wondering where that pretty little mirror I just made is going to go, don’t worry, it’ll find a new home soon enough.

And I just have to go here for a second, when I toured my home for the first time, it looked like this:

I love how far this place has come, as much as someone could love a little bathroom.