The same crew, materials and hardware that build a kitchen build a vanity, a laundry run or a wall of office storage. What changes is the dimensions, and every one of those rooms has numbers that decide whether it works.
Most bathrooms still have a vanity at the old standard of thirty to thirty two inches, which exists for a historical reason rather than an ergonomic one: post-war houses had few bathrooms, so one basin served children and adults alike.
Comfort height is thirty four to thirty six and is now what most new vanities are built to. The difference is whether an adult stands upright to wash their face or leans forward, twice a day, for as long as they own the house.
It cuts both ways. A user around five foot four is comfortable at thirty two to thirty four, and a family bathroom with small children has a real case for the lower standard, so we ask who uses the room before drawing anything at all. See bathroom vanities, the rooms hub and worktops.
Recent work
What to expect
A Fort Saskatchewan Room, Step by Step
Ask who uses it
Vanity height depends on the people, and hook height depends on whether children need to reach. These are the questions a catalogue cannot answer and a survey can.
Find the services
Waste traps, supply pipes, vents and sockets all sit inside the space the cabinetry wants. Far better located on paper than discovered with a saw.
Specify for the room
Bathrooms and laundries are wet rooms in slow motion. Moisture-resistant board and sealed edges where water sits, rather than a kitchen spec moved sideways.
Fit and match the house
Same door profile and finish as the kitchen where the rooms see each other, so the house reads as one project rather than several separate jobs.
Wet rooms
These Cabinets Live a Harder Life
A kitchen base unit dries out between splashes. A vanity sits in a room steamed twice a day and takes standing water along its front edge from wet hands, and a laundry run shares the space with machines that vibrate and hoses that occasionally weep.
So the specification changes even though the joinery does not: moisture-resistant board, sealed edges where water sits, and a finish chosen to tolerate humidity rather than purely for looks. The extra cost is small and the difference in lifespan is not.
Plumbing is the other constraint, since a waste trap runs straight through the middle of a vanity and has to be designed around rather than discovered. Drawers cut in a U to pass either side of it are the usual answer. See laundry rooms, mudroom storage and drawer organisation.
Built for it
Other rooms
Cabinetry Beyond the Kitchen in Fort Saskatchewan
Each room with its own dimensions, its own moisture problem and its own load.
Heights, moisture, plumbing and matching the rest of the house.
Comfort height, 34 to 36 inches, suits most adults and is now standard. The older 30 to 32 inch standard still suits shorter users and family bathrooms with young children.
You can, and it will not last as long. A bathroom is steamed twice a day and takes standing water at the front edge, so moisture-resistant board is worth the small extra.
It runs through the middle of the cabinet, which is why vanity drawers are often U-shaped around it. We locate the trap before the boxes are built rather than after.
It should not touch it. Leave at least an inch of air or spin-cycle vibration travels into the wall studs and you hear every load in the room above.
Twelve inches for cubbies and shoes, eighteen for coats on hooks, and twenty two to twenty four if coats go on hangers behind doors. Depth cannot be changed later.
Yes, if you want it to. Same door profile, finish and hardware, built by the same shop, which is worth having where the rooms are visible from each other.
Often. A vanity or a laundry run on its own is completely normal work, and plenty of people do one room years before they touch the kitchen.
We survey the space, find the pipes and vents hiding in it, and set the heights around the people who use it. Quoted by the linear foot like the kitchen.
