Business Travel and How I Decided to Put in a Bathroom Medicine Cabinet and the Aftermath Thereof

So, Kari’s work has decided to spend some bucks on her and send her up to Seattle/Everett/Renton for a few days to look at how part of her company does business up there. I think this is great that they’re investing money in her to see her do her job better. Well, they’re not putting her up in the Ritz Carlton and flying her first class. She actually is flying on SouthWorst. In fact, at the time of this writing she is currently up there. It was a balmy 42 last night and rainy when she arrived according to the almighty Internet. So, when the cat’s away the mice will… well, do home projects on the sly to surprise the wife, err, cat!

My cunning plan started a few days before her travel when I figured I’d install a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. We went to Home Depot to pick up the never-ending list of items and I just happened to wander near the ceiling fans. Huh, funny that. I found out what she liked and mentally recorded the model, looks, etc. and then picked up the rest of my list and headed home. The process of determining that I would do the ceiling fan is mainly a product of frustration. I find that as my (or Kari’s) frustration level rises regarding a project; it tends to bubble its way to the top. Meaning, that this point, any light would be good in that room as it is lacking anything in the ceiling. This would be a hurdle to overcome, obviously. But, months ago at a garage sale I picked up a mounting brace meant for ceiling fans, so I just needed to drill up from the center of the bedroom into the attic space above and stick a little something up through the hole to see where I would be working up in the attic. One issue is that we both want the light switch on the right wall as we enter. However, the previous owners had a pocket door installed there precluding us from mounting a light switch there. There will be one there eventually as I plan on removing that pocket door which means tearing that wall down and framing a new one. Fun for another day obviously. A friend at work suggested just surface mounting a remote switch there, which I will be doing in the interim. Another concern was finding out if I had power up there. So, I grabbed the ladder and poked my head up through the attic access point in the master bedroom’s closet. Popping my head up there, I didn’t like what I saw. It’s all loose fill insulation. I don’t have much in the way of protecting myself from that, so I’ll need to invest in some of that or investigate replacing that with rolled insulation (or find out if I even want to). The good news was that I saw plenty of cables running through the attic space for power. Climbing back down and realizing that a ceiling fan may be a job that’s better suited to working with someone to help, I scraped that idea, for now.

The other project that’s been on my plate for a while now and has slowing been percolating its way to the top has been the lack of a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. We had already purchased the cabinet and I had previously marked where it needed to go. The reason it isn’t in already is because I found there was a stud running straight through the middle of the hole I’d need to cut and also that there were at least two electrical cables crossing that area too. I knew that would be a potentially long project to start with all the caveats there. One thing I noticed, however, whilst in the attic was that the wall I would be cutting into was not load-bearing. So, I would not have to worry about boxing the medicine cabinet in with studs.

I started the project at 2:00pm after dropping Kari off at the airport and a little lunch at home (salmon burger and chicken tortilla soup, yum!). I was able to cut through the dry wall pretty easily after scoring the perimeter with a knife to prevent peeling the paper/paint past the cutting point. Now, the big part: I had to cut the stud and the problem was that there was a hole drilled through the stud to allow the electrical cable to pass through. Using my handheld circular saw, I was able to notch above and below the hole to avoid nicking the Romex cable and then used a chisel to finish it off. Ok, now that the wires could be moved out of the way I had the job of cutting the stud to get it out of there. My circular saw would only cut to a depth of 2.5 inches so I needed to call in for the big guns. I called my neighbor and asked if I could borrow his reciprocating Sawzall and its blade was the perfect length to cut the stud without poking through the other side of the wall. Within a few minutes we had cut the stud and pulled it out causing minimal damage to the other side. Looking at the other side of the wall in the hallway, I was able to see we had only one patch to work on as the nail from the stud had pulled through as we pulled the stud out. No big deal. I would have to move the security system panel over a few inches which meant I had a 1.5 inch diameter hole to patch for that. Again, no big deal.

After pulling the stud out and cleaning up the hole to allow the cabinet to fit snuggly, I taped the electrical lines to the far wall so it wouldn’t cause the cabinet to warp if it got stuck with a twist behind the cabinet. I also cut a notch in the top of the bottom stud so I could lay the electrical line across that and have the cabinet fit over it. At this point, it was just a matter of screwing some studs to the sides of the hole to allow for the side mounting screws of the cabinet to have something to, well, screw into. With those in place, I put the cabinet in the hole with some minor adjustments to the hole size and screwed in one screw to keep it in place. I grabbed my level and saw that it was level. I then proceeded to screw in the other three screws, inserted the shelves and cleaned up my mess. Looking at the time, it was 4:30. Time for Kari to be arriving in Seattle soon. Not bad. 2.5 hours to complete something I thought would have taken much longer. Albeit, if I had done more with framing the hole (if it were load-bearing) and/or messed with the electrical cables (if they couldn’t be routed or made to cooperate), it would have taken some more time. As it was, I was in the middle of putting tools away when Kari called and said she had arrived and was waiting for her luggage. I wished her luck and fun (and warmth!) and proceeded to clean the bathroom and make everything pretty. I patched the hole on the other side and let that dry over night. I’ll be checking that out when I get home to see if any further touch ups are needed and then hopefully painting tonight so she’ll have no clue when she gets home that anything was done until she goes into the bathroom. I’m looking forward to her surprise. The only other clue should be the relocation of the security panel, but she’s usually not that observant. We’ll see.

In other slightly interesting news: the physics course this semester is covering digital circuitry and we’re building circuits to cover basic logic in preparation for our class final project of building a 4-bit computer. Sounds archaic, but that only sound archaic until you’re faced with making one yourself =). I’m enjoying it so far seeing how these things work is fascinating.