One of my dreams come true at our new house is hidden kitty litter boxes! I love my adorable kitties, but no one loves their litter boxes. So a goal in our new house was to hide their boxes somehow to make them not so ugly and annoying for ourselves and guests, but available and convenient for the cats.

Here are my cats:

 

And here are before pictures of their not-so-adorable litter boxes:

 

 

I couldn’t wait to get these suckers out of the way and hidden. Although, now that I say that, it seems that I’m all about hiding things at my house..! (Did you see my post, “Hide the TV“?) But I’m not — I don’t hide everything at my house! Seriously though, all of our spaces have things we need for certain functions, but that doesn’t mean we always want to look at them. So I try to make spaces beautiful while accommodating function.

Back to the litter boxes. I looked at some ideas on pinterest for hiding litter boxes and decided that the best way to hide litter boxes in our house was to store the litter boxes inside the vanities in the bathroom and laundry room (each kitty has their own space because of food allergies and medications) and then cut holes through the sides of the vanities to allow the cats to pass through.

Matt was adorable about this, “It will be dark in there. Maybe I should put some small LEDs inside the vanity so that they can see?” He’s so cute. :-) I reminded Matt that they go potty in the dark half the time anyway, and reassured him it would be fine! (And it has been!)

We did this project while my parents were visiting, because my Dad is super awesome and handy! We were also installing a new vanity in the laundry room, as well as new cabinets, and we definitely needed his help. Thanks, Dad!

Both of the vanities needed to have double doors to allow the boxes to be moved in and out for placement and cleaning. In the powder room, the vanity that we had consisted of drawers and a single door. This was not going to work. We headed over to the Habitat Re-Store and bought some new vanity doors… then the guys removed the existing drawers & door, cut away the extra pieces framing them, and installed the “new” doors. Perfect! (While they were at it, I also had the guys install a new counter-top and sink! Away with the gray! The new white one looks so nice!)

In the laundry room, we were installing a brand new vanity, so we just picked one out that had double doors. Easy! :-) (Also, I mentioned that the laundry room received a big update with cabinets at the same time… a post on that project will happen sometime soonish! Stay tuned!)

Due to the plumbing, their existing litter boxes wouldn’t fit, so I headed to the store and found some pieces that would work. I ended up with large plastic totes that we cut some pieces out of to accommodate the plumbing, as well as a cut out to line up with the hole in the side of the vanity so the cats can go in and out! Then I put a smaller plastic basin inside each tote that is actually the litter box. The larger tote protects the interior of the vanity from the kitty and box. I can also pull the whole thing out to clean it. Here is one of the totes with the litter box inside it.

Finally, the sides of the vanity were cut to match the placement of the totes/boxes inside, and we were finished.  We showed the cats their new bathrooms and we’ve all been living happily ever after! The cats don’t seem to mind going into the vanities and I LOVE not having to look at the litter boxes all of the time! Hurray!

Here are the updated vanities and their litter boxes hiding inside: