Saturday, November 17, 2012

Kitty's Business

Finding a spot for the kitty litter is never an easy task.  Our basement and laundry room are accessed through a door that is always closed so that option was out.  We have one small powder room on the first floor and one guest bathroom and one master bathroom on the second floor but none of them are large enough to accommodate humans and a kitty.  The other rooms in our house are used, a lot, so finding a place to hide the litter box was proving to be a challenge.  Enter my hubby's creative genius! (I am probably biased, but trust me, that guy is creative, handy, and as a bonus...really handsome).

Nate's idea was to take advantage of the fact that the garage is adjacent to the kitchen area and that they share a common wall.  Out came the drywall saw and a hole was cut!


The photo above was taken while standing in the kitchen.  The door to the right of the hole is the door leading into the garage.  The hole, with the very obvious yellow arrow photoshopped above it, is the hole leading into the garage for Murphy (the cat).  We simply used a drywall saw to cut a large enough hole to accomodate Murphy but nothing too large that it looked obnoxious.  We trimmed out the hole with painted 1"x6" pre-primed pine from Home Depot.  The hole was cut prior to us installing our baseboards so the baseboard was simply cut to fit snuggly around the hole.


Inside the garage is where the "kitty business" happens.  You may have seen the rest of the garage featured here. A post will be coming on the garage build out but we basically recycled our old kitchen cabinets and made our own cabinets where needed (like the litter box cabinet).  The cabinets we made were constructed out of birch veneer plywood.  Everything was then painted to blend in.  More on that later though!

See the bottom left cabinet in the photo below?  The one just to the left of the shelves?  Yep, that's it!  Hiding in there is Murphy's litter box.  The hole from the kitchen area leads directly into that cabinet. 


And if you open the doors to that cabinet, you will find...


The litter box!  You can see the hole leading into the kitchen on the left.  The shelves on the right are used for shoe storage (obviously) and for holding the pooper scooper.  The fresh litter is stored hidden in the cabinet just above the litter box cabinet.  It is easy to access and keep the mess out of the house.

Here is a better shot looking from the litter box through the hole into the kitchen.  You can also see that we used hidden hinges on each cabinet door.


In order to keep Murphy from escaping out of the litter box cabinet into the garage and making his way into the wild outdoors, we added a clip on each door with catches attached to the cabinet so that the doors are secure.

We also added some weather stripping to one of the doors as well as some foam stripping around the entire perimeter of the door opening in order to keep cold air getting into the house through the litter box hole.



It really is the best solution for us with the layout of our home.  The cat is happy, and so are we!  We would not recommend this project if you are someone that does not clean out the litter box often though.  There is, depending on how serious Murphy's "business" was that day, the occasional whiff of something unpleasant coming into the house.  Luckily, my hubby's personality never allows for the litter box to not be cleaned on a daily basis.  And since I am pregnant, I get out of those duties for 9+ months!! 

So that is how we figured out how to hide the litter box but still have easy access to it.  How about you guys?  Any ideas on hiding the not so great aspects of having a pet?  Any ideas on what we should do with our turtle Piggy when the baby arrives?  He currently resides in the soon to be nursery.  Off to find a solution to that little problem.....

32 comments:

  1. brilliant idea! We're not handy types, so for now our cats have the guest bathroom all to themselves. You should contract your husband out so he can make these hidden litter boxes for others. I'd hire him! :)

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  2. This is fantastic! I was just wondering what we could do to get our litter box out of the way.

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  3. That is the best placement of a litter box I have ever seen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  4. Pretty sure my husband is going to die when I show him this garage. We are about to redo our kitchen, and he LOVES his man-shed. Any tips for preserving the cabinets as they come out?

    Asten xo

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  5. Very cool idea. I am not a cat person but I will be showing this to my sister. Very clever.

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  6. This is genius. I love that it so easy to access to clean and it is hidden. Super smart.

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  7. This is awesome! I was wondering how you kept the cold/warm air from the garage out of the house because our attached garage is not insulated. I am soooo envious, what a great job!

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  8. Awesome awesome idea!! Great job!!!

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  9. SUCH a great idea!! I'm going to have to remember this...

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  10. Love it! The practical side of home renos usually aren't glamorous but we all have the same dilemmas. Mine is where to hide the microwave....

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  11. We have four kitties, but luckily we have a large laundry room where their 2 main large litterboxes are. We have one smaller box in our bathroom and one in our son's bathroom, tucked between the sink and toilet or toilet and shower.

    I have some friends who came up with a solution similar to yours. Rather than hiding the box in a cabinet, they installed some shelving in the garage and built sort of a caged area with the litter boxes in it. Works similar to your cabinet idea, except that it's exposed to the air in the garage, rather than being closed in. Helps the stink dissipate, but doesn't do as well with keeping cold air from getting into the house!

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  12. May i make a suggestion for the kitty litter? We switched to the crystals type of kitty litter as they reported to be better for odour absorption (i am in Australia, i assume they are available world wide?). I thought that was an ambitious statement and that my fussy cat would not go for the crystals but she did and surprise! the odour is seriously absorbed. They are great!!!!! I only change the tray once a week or so and even if I don't pooper scoop every day the smell is still absorbed. Crystals rule!!!

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    1. Thanks! I will have to look into these. We just switched to Arm and Hammer Multi-Cats and have been pretty pleased so far. My husband is also very very good about cleaning the litter box often so I think that helps too! Thanks for the suggestion :)

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  13. clever!
    your blog is darling and we are now following! xoxo ps come enter our giveaway here!

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  14. Greatness! I am not a cat owner, but love the idea of this business being tucked away. Nice work!

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  15. We too did this for our two cats. We installed a kitty door in our laundry room under the laundry sink that leads out into the garage. Since our garage is a few steps down from the rest of the house, we built a "wooden litter box" that is on the same level as the kitty door and it can accommodate up to three litter boxes. It has a hinged lid that we can open to scoop out the dirty litter and is secure so the cats can't escape into the garage. The wooden box also has some wire mesh installed in an opening at the bottom so that we can easily sweep out litter that is kicked out the box and it also provides some ventilation. It has been the perfect solution for our family. I never have to worry about the odor or an unsightly litter box in my home.

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  16. That is an AWESOME solution to your dilemma. I would like to suggest a light inside the cabinet so kitty can see what he's doing. My cats hate using the litter box in a dark place. Just an idea. Again, brilliant. You all did GOOD!!

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  17. Was there any issue with building code or fire code with this door? I wanted to do something similar but there are some major rules about the air flow between the garage and house. We don't want this to be an issue when we at some point decide to sell and we end up with a repair on our hands.

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  18. is the garage heated?

    this is a great idea, and want to try it,

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  19. I would love to try this, but want to know if the garage is heated?

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  20. It would be great to have a vent also, to vent the odors outside (for the cat especially). 8-) There is a lot online, including using a computer fan with very little electricity.

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  21. Other ideas a motion detecting LED light, if cold in the garage, a light bulb could also provide heat (could be on timer)

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  22. There's no way this is to code. There are rules about the seal between your garage and your home. Just an FYI.

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  23. This is a very good idea :) Love it! <3 I would suggest cutting to size one of those kitty mats (to clean their paws as they walk out of the kitty litter) so your cat doesnt drag too much kitty litter into your kitchen.

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  24. Great idea! We did something similar into our utility/furnace room. We couldn't do it into our garage due to building codes, the garage has to be completely sealed from the rest of the house due to car exhaust/carbon monoxide.

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  25. You should put a narrow entry table on the wall where the cat door is. It would be handy to have a bowl for your keys and what not; plus it would obscure the cat entrance.

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  26. I wouldn't think this would leak anymore than a garage door entrance for fumes especially on a older home where the seal is worn.

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