Berlin´s got a problem..
A serious problem: most of those beautiful "Altbau" flats (Altbau is used for a specific style of building, very common in Berlin - usually pre WWII buildings with high ceilings, wooden floors and stucco ceilings) didn´t have bathrooms when they were built.
Typically all flats on one floor would share a bathroom in the hallway, or sometimes even outhouses.
Since this is quite inconvenient and not quite so up-to-date anymore, during the past 20-30 years or so, bathrooms were added - read: crammed into the existing structure. This resulted in narrow, long, slouchlike, tiny bathrooms.
Quite the joke, really, when you first come here.
So much for Berlins bathroom history, in case you´ve ever wondered.
Slouchlike bathrooms make for practically zero storage space.
Mine looked like this - pictured below, since otherwise the ugly bathroom would be the cover picture -, not even was it quite sterile and ugly, but i also seriously lacked space for toiletries. Then i remembered something i saw at bolia.com a while ago.. For a whooping 349€. For what was basically three pieces of wood and a piece of rope.
So i set out to build it myself, for about 10€ and about 5 minutes of time.
This is before - the nasty corner:
Told you, it ain´t pretty.
I already had those ugly hooks hanging from the previous tenants and thought of ways to use this for storage. So when i remembered that bolia piece.. I actually even had some leftover wood from a different project and some woodstain (woodstain is optional, but good for adjusting the look), so it was pretty much free.
Here´s what you´ll need:
1 piece of wood, 70x20cm
1 piece of wood, 50x20cm
thick white rope, cut into 2x100cm and 2x50cm
1 wooden pole, 70 cm
woodstain optional
adjust lengths to your liking
Then simply attach the wooden pole to the wall - in my case i used the already existing hooks, but you can just attach some, easy and cheap.
Knot the rope pieces, wrap around the wooden pole and insert woodshelves. Easy as that.
And after about 5 minutes of work, you have a beautifully fitting shelve with plenty usage. Obviously you may use it in other rooms as well ;)
Et voilà, you have recreated a 349€ designer piece for about 10€ and 5 minutes of your precious time.
As always, please share if you decide do rebuild this, i´d love to see the outcome, and let me know if you´ve got any questions!