Bathroom Storage Redux

I recently updated our bathroom storage. Cute spice racks to holds all of my lotions, toners, and cosmetics. It was a better use of the very limited space we have in our bathroom area. Everything was so easy to get to, I didn’t have to dig products out in order to use them, and I could see everything that I owned so I didn’t forget about anything.

It worked great! For about 4 days.

Then, in the middle of the night, it all came crashing down. Literally. The top shelf pulled off the wall (like it took the paint with it) and hit the next two shelves on its way down which ripped the other two shelved off the walls. Stuff was everywhere and it scared the poo out of everyone.

I had fastened the racks on with a super strong Command tape. It promised to hold 16 lbs and I was way under that weight limit. I had let it sit and “cure” for the recommended time before I added products in the first time so the hold should have been complete and strong. My best guess is that since it was Command tape for hanging pictures and artwork that it couldn’t deal with the weight pulling outwards rather than downwards like a frame would? Does that make sense?

The next morning, I gathered most everything up and thought that I had escaped with no product damage. Nothing seemed broken or oozing and I had a number of different powders and liquid-y products in those shelves so, all in all, I thought it was not too bad. I would just have to figure out another way to attach my spice racks to the wall.

Oh no. No. I was so wrong. I had one broken product but I didn’t realize it right away. Mike and I were outside and we both noticed that we had a weird pink chalk on our pant legs and shoes. Odd. We couldn’t figure out where it had come from. Then I go to get ready and opened up the back hatch to let some light in (it’s fairly dark in the back of the bus, we didn’t think the lighting situation out fully so the shower area has nothing and there are no lights to compensate for the light that blocked out by the closets) and that’s when I saw the pink. Pink powder was everywhere. My most pigmented blush had been destroyed in the fall (not a huge loss to me personally, it was in a palette and was the one shade that I never used) and had just exploded all over the back of the bus. Since neither of us had noticed it we had both tracked pink throughout the bus and Finn had walked in it and then jumped on the bed getting pink doggie paw prints on our white blankets. Poor guy had pink on his butt and tail. Fabulous.

So I cleaned everything up and mopped the floor.

I decided that I didn’t want to risk another fall so I went to Home Depot and got 4″ corner braces and screws hopefully short enough that they wouldn’t punch through the other side of the linen closet wall. While I was there I also got some new hardware and hooks for the closet doors.

Now everything is screwed into place and it is not moving.

I had been hoping to avoid drilling but it ended up being a smoother process than I thought it would be. I had purchased screw caps to pop on the ends where I thought they were going to punch through the linen closet wall but I didn’t need them. The one big benefit to the shelves falling was that I got to re-position them and make the spacing much more even which is working out waaay better than the wonky spacing I had before. And it looks nicer too. Win!

Bonus, I put the new door hardware on (we had the straight bar kind on before but the holes are spaced further apart than is standard for drawer pulls so that wasn’t working) and added some hooks so we have a new place to hang towels and pjs. We have transformed our shower rod into a hanger for winter coats, jackets, and sweaters (we don’t have a water heater sooo…no showers in the bus for a while) which was obscuring our other towel hooks…and you know, no one wants a wet towel mushed up against a wool sweater.