EcrosTechWiki | Woodworking / A Toothbrush and Toothpaste Holder

After Opus One, What's Next?

Still unsure about whether or not I'd taken up woodworking as a hobby, I was looking for a project to follow Opus One. Staying with the theme of re-equipping the master bathroom, I looked around for something else that would not do the renovation justice. My eyes fell on an old, discolored plastic toothbrush holder. How old was it? On the bottom of it I read "Made in the USA". That's how old it was. So I set about designing a replacement constructed from ¼" thick wood panels, which was all I had at the time. What I came up with follows the desired function closely. At the front is a tray for a tube of toothpaste, which sets the overall width. Behind that are slots for four toothbrushes. These don't use up the width, so on either side is a wider slot, which can be ignored or used for items such as combs, nail clippers, nail files and tweezers that might be useful in a bathroom. Rather than just make it a utilitarian box, I decided to echo the whimsy of Opus One by making it look like a miniature version of some large and imposing piece of furniture. You will have to judge whether or not I succeeded from the photograph at right.

Four wood species are used. The rear and the front are curly maple (although the figure is quite light). The panel that separates the toothbrushes from the toothpaste is cherry. The dividers between the toothbrushes and the accessory slots are walnut. The side panels are African mahogany. I made these choices based only on the color of the wood. In particular, I was looking for contrast where the square tenons protruded through panels, dark against light in front of the toothbrushes and light against dark on the sides. The tenons are intended to echo robust furniture construction, perhaps a wood high-backed bench, although I confess that I did no research on the subject. Sitting next the the washbasin, the toothbrush holder is likely to get splashed with water. I'm hoping that three coats of urethane will protect it until it dries out. I'm not sure that this would be enough if the wood is sitting in a pool of water on the counter surface. So, as well as shaping wood feet, there are brass screws in the feet to hold the wood away from the surface on which it is sitting. As the wood is quite light, to prevent the holder from getting knocked over I added a steel plate in a double floor under the toothpaste area to act as ballast.