DIY Hidden Litter Box
Not everyone is blessed to have a basement area to put their cat’s litter box so they:
A) don’t have to smell it
B) don’t have to look at it.
If you’re like me, you may live on one floor as a renter. Our office area was always the place to have our cat Finnley’s litter box. We went with the office because we didn’t want it in the kitchen, bedroom, living room, or guest bedroom (you’re welcome guests). You may be thinking…what about your bathroom? I wish, but our bathroom is so tiny we can hardly fit in it. So that left the office.
Prior to building the hidden litter box, she used a covered plastic one that had a swinging door. It seemed to work wonderfully for her. However, even if I cleaned it all the time you could still faintly smell it, and to be honest it wasn’t cute AT ALL (not that a cat’s toilet needs to be cute haha).
I always saw cool hidden litter boxes on those expensive pet websites, but I just didn’t want to spend the money on it. Everything changed when we all had to work from home indefinitely and we were stuck in that office with our cat’s toilet. NOT IDEAL!
(inspiration images I had in mind)
So that’s when I put my thinking cap on and decided I was going to achieve this on my own. I spent hours on Facebook Marketplace (FBMP) scouring through all the cabinets, tv counsels, buffets, and anything that remotely looked like the shape and size I was going for. I had already purchased the litter box I wanted to use inside of it and knew I had to find something that could fit the width of it. This ended up being a large obstacle because so many of the cabinets I was finding weren’t wide enough to fit a box inside. But finally, the thrifting gods blessed me, because I came across a very old looking cabinet that seemed low enough to the ground and the right shape for only $20. (Pictured Below)
After picking this piece up I realized it smelt like must and smoke. GROSS! Those are legit my 2 LEAST FAVORITE smells. With that in mind, I did some research on how to remove those smells. It seemed the most natural way to remove them would be with vinegar and water and letting the sun cure it outside. Believe it or not, but this truly worked. This, plus me sanding down all of it helped remove almost all of the smell and the remaining tinge would be taken care of with paint.
Now we were ready to rock and roll! Except I didn’t have a well-planned idea haha. Something to note about me and my style of creating is that I “wing” a lot of stuff. I find that too intense of plans don’t let my creative juices flow and no plans at all stress me out. So I tend to fall in the middle somewhere, which often works out!
Anywho, I want to mention that before I sanded down and cleaned the piece I did remove all of the unwanted parts of the cabinet. This meant the doors, the legs and lastly cutting out those middle boards that were in the interior portion.
picture 1: removing unwanted parts | picture 2: cleaning with vinegar and water | picture 3: sanded down and drying in the sun
The next steps would involve cutting with a tool I did not own. So when I was back at my parents one day I asked my brother if I could borrow a tool from the shop. He asked what for and I explained and he mentioned he would actually be in my neck of the woods that week for work and he could come and cut it for me since it was an intense saw I never used before. So disclaimer here: I did not actually cut the cat entry hole or the boards out of the center. He did that for me.
Since the center boards were notched into the middle interior portion, they ended up leaving indented grooves. I used a wood filler mix to patch up that area, not in a beautiful way, but I wasn’t too worried because I would be painting over it and then later applying contact paper. The wood filler that I linked here is what I used, but truthfully I do not recommend using this. You had to mix up a toxic combo of stuff and it dried so fast it was almost impossible to use. In the future, I would maybe use something like this one that’s easier to work with.
Time for the new doors! Since I wasn’t going to use the old doors on this anymore I needed to make some. I measured the exact size of the front and made sure I knew what size each door would have to be before going to the hardware store. This project was done before we had gotten our circular saw. So if I wanted to have something cut I would need to have Home Depot (where I was going) do that for me. Yes, they do that if you were not aware of this. I know the day I found out about this, it CHANGED MY LIFE for the better! All you have to do is go and pick out what wood you’d like to use and then head to the back wood area of the store and ask them to cut it down to the size you’d like. This is perfect if you don’t want to mess with hauling your own tools out or if you were like me at the time and didn’t have the right ones.
Up next was picking a paint color (I suck and actually can’t remember which color I picked. I am sorry everyone. I do know it was one of these 3 pictured though haha) and then making sure I was properly following the right painter's steps. I wanted to make sure that this piece was primed first, I used the ZINSSER® Bulls Eye 1-2-3® Water-Base Primer (2 coats) so the paint had something to stick to and it wouldn’t just soak into the wood. This primer is amazing, I highly recommend it! Then I went ahead and painted (2 coats) the chosen color onto the entire piece. Lastly, making sure I did a waterproof Polyurethane topcoat with a matte finish (2 coats) since this would be a cat’s toilet after all.
picture 1: the final 3 options for color. I wanted something neutral with grey undertones.
picture 2: how it looked after the first primer coat.
Then it was time to bring this bad boy upstairs to our unit! I 1,000% thought this was the home stretch and would be easy-peasy. WOW, WAS I WRONG!
I knew I wanted to line the entire inside of the cabinet with contact paper that would be waterproof in case of any accidents in the box. I actually found this contact paper at the Dollar Tree by me. So that was a huge win! I thought the pattern gave it a clean powder room vibe. HAHA! I laid the contact paper down and cut it to the correct size for where I needed it.
Finn was already checking out the interior of the box, not having a clue it was for her.
After the contact paper was on I screwed on the swinging door for her to get into the box. We ordered this one from Amazon! I had also ordered these modern metal legs for the cabinet from Amazon. I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t too tall for her to climb into the cabinet (she’s a short cat). These ended up being the perfect height. Unfortunately, these did not come in matte black. So I ordered the silver ones and spray painted them matte black.
After adding these items the next step was to attach the two doors. This is the part that I thought would be super simple. However, this was the point in the project where I learned a lot about hinges. Who would have thought hinges were so complicated. I know I didn’t! I was so naive. I thought you could just buy those super simple looking hinges (inset flush). What I didn’t know is that I actually needed to buy hinges that were way more intense and would be drilled into the inside of the cabinet (full overlay). The reason I ran into these issues was that I designed the doors to be frameless. Meaning that the wood of the base of the cabinet would not show when you look at the cabinet straight on. The doors would cover it making it a frameless style that needs full overlay hinges. I had measured my doors so they would fit over the top of the cabinet perfectly instead of fitting into the cabinet. So for them to have a gap to open, the hinge needed to be an expander hinge that sat in the inside of the door.
picture 1: the widening hinges we had to use since the doors were frameless
picture 2: the inset flush hinges I thought I could use but couldn’t because they are for framed doors
After all of the hinge frustration, I was finally able to add on the door handles which I also bought from Home Depot but you could get anywhere. I went with matte black square ones to match the leg style.
THEN….I was finished with this litter box and DANG I was proud of it! I couldn’t believe that I was able to make this out of an old cabinet. It was a complete transformation!
Some behind the scenes/disclaimer information regarding the state of this box now.
1) it was difficult to get her to go inside of it at first. We had to keep her old one for a little bit and wait until we saw she was using it. We would spend time putting her into the box or leaving the doors open so she felt comfortable in it.
2) I added contact paper to the doors just in case there would be pee
3) I ended up having to get a different litter box for inside of it because I found out female cats pee higher up and that’s why pee was going outside of this short one.
4) We had to take the flap off of the swinging door because we figured out that her tail was getting caught in it due to the height the box was at.
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