Our litter box used to live in the guest bathroom (the guest shower, actually) but that made it difficult for guests to actually use the shower – so we did what anyone looking to create space does and we went to Ikea. A quick google search shows me that I’m not the first to use the Stuva this way, but here’s my take on it anyway.
Tools/materials:
Stuva Bench from Ikea
Cat door from Home Depot
- 1″ thick plywood
- Jigsaw
- Optional – plastic lining in case your cats sometimes miss the litter box -_-
It’s basically as easy as installing the cat door on the box and putting a litter box inside.
We were happy to discover that the materials of the Stuva are pretty sturdy – we cut the first hole out of the drawer front and while it wasn’t solid wood, it was pretty durable and cut well with the jigsaw.
There were a couple of modifications we made so that the door could be installed – it’s meant to be installed on something as thick as a normal household door, and the front of the drawer is fairly thin. To fix this, we cut a rectangle out of plywood and added that to the back of the drawer front.
The last extra step that we took was to double line the whole thing with plastic sheeting. We have one cat that isn’t great at aiming, and we didn’t want to have to disassemble the whole box to clean it. Before installing the cat door, we lined the whole box with plastic sheeting, cut a hole in it just big enough for the door, and then put the door in. This way the sheeting is held in place by the outer rim of the door, and it makes a pretty good seal. Then for good measure we put another layer in and just taped it down. It’s not the prettiest, but it’s also a toilet box, so.
We got the cat door thinking that it would help contain litter and maybe some odor, but so far we’ve just left it propped open for the cats – they were very hesitant to use the flap, and we didn’t want to discourage them from going inside the new box, so for now it’s just a nicely trimmed entrance.
The bench lives in our front hallway with a taller version of the Stuva where we keep all the stuff that doesn’t fit in our kitchen cabinets.
Craft Repository 