A camouflaged cleanout
Here's how the cleanout for your shower plumbing can blend right into the architecture of your bathroom
I remodeled the half-bathroom in my 20-year-old house without changing any plumbing or the floor plan. To meet code requirements, the shower plumbing needed a cleanout. The plumber installed one but left it protruding about 1/2 in. from the drywall—an eyesore to say the least. The cleanout might please the inspector, but wouldn’t make my wife happy.
To make the most of this awkward situation, I used a jigsaw to cut a 3-1/2-in.-dia. hole in a scrap of 1×5 pine, leaving enough clearance to fit the piece over the protruding plumbing. I cut the height of the pine so that the hole was centered in the piece. Then I passed a router outfitted with a roundover beading bit around the face, sides, and top of the piece, trimming the bottom flush with the tile floor. I glued the piece to the drywall and butted the baseboard up to it to make it look like a trim detail. After that, it was ready for painting. It passed my wife’s inspection on the first try.
Photos by: Colin Hurd
