The Clever Toilet Paper Storage Idea That Comes From A Budget-Friendly Thrift Flip

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Back in the day, avid magazine readers often kept their beloved periodicals in a double-sided wooden rack divided down the middle by a solid piece with a handle. If you're lucky enough to find one at a yard sale or a thrift store, you should pick it up, even if you're not much of a magazine reader. Why? Because you can repurpose a thrifted magazine rack as a cute and affordable toilet paper storage solution. As demonstrated by @bjolene427 on TikTok, the two sections that once held magazines are typically wide enough to fit standard toilet paper rolls — and look good while doing it. It works the same way for rolled bath towels, too. 

This toilet paper holder project is wide open for decorative interpretation. Being typically made of wood, these pieces have good bones upon which you can build. And being vintage, they deserve a vintage look, like shabby chic. To get started with this decorative refurb, you'll need some paint and sanding supplies. The sanding process for a distressed wood look requires rough and smooth sandpaper. This allows you to vary the texture left by the effects of sanding, which makes the finished product look more authentically distressed. 

To shabby it up, you'll need to give your upcycled magazine rack a thorough cleaning. Wipe out any dust or dirt with a damp towel, making sure to get down into crevices, then wipe it dry. The shabbying begins once you start sanding. In the first round, you'll take off any of the original paint or stain on the piece. This preps the wood for the layers of chalk paint you'll lay down afterward. In some cases, you can distress wood without sanding it. However, most of the time, the new paint needs a new, or at least new-ish, surface to cling to. So, sand it thoroughly to make the wooden surface like new again.

For the painting part, try Rust-Oleum Chalked Ultra Matte Paint. It comes in one of the most common color palettes for shabby chic style — warm whites and light brights. It'll contrast nicely with the dark wood beneath the paint that will reveal itself once you sand the chalk paint down a bit. You'll need large and small paint brushes to apply it. 

Next, paint, paint, sand, and repeat. The thing to remember when you're working with the chalk paint is that you won't completely sand it off. Instead, you'll sand down just enough to see the wood or old paint peeking out underneath the layers. 

Contact paper and shelf liners offer you another way to cover your toilet paper holder. In many ways, adding contact paper or shelf liners to the piece is a less tedious way to cover it than distressing it is. Contact paper is usually just peel-and-stick, whereas shelf liners require some added glue to get them to adhere to the surface. One thing to note with both: They show every sin, any bump of paint on the surface of the upcycled rack, or any dent in the wood. In light of that, you should check the piece for blemishes, chips, or even dirty debris before you cover it with the contact paper, and then do what you can to sand them out or fill them. 

How you apply the decorative paper depends on the style and construction of the piece. Some of these pieces sport very large closed sections of wood. As such, you have the option of covering large portions of the rack with contact paper. If it's not constructed this way, take a different approach. For example, if the sides of the rack are just a series of round dowels held together by an overhead bar, then cover each dowel (or every other dowel) with contact paper and leave the rest of it sans covering.