In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2) by SIGNYM

Out and about on another beautiful day up here. Small things to do today when I am out.

Really need to send a message to a friend about her birthday which is Friday. I've got her present just have to see when she can fit it in.

Later peeps.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 5:52 PM

All done for today. Had to go back out as I forgot something. Having a sit down now.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 6:13 PM

Just working more on the bathroom and other things.

Today has mostly been a caulk and spackle day. Yuck. I hate both of them.

Those quarter round trim pieces I put up against the vinyl plates to the shower are officially finished now. I'll do one more coat of paint on the face and jambs of the window, but that's more or less done. It probably doesn't need another coat, but since this is the bathroom I'm going to go ahead and do it anyhow. I painted the toilet paper holder, but that's probably going to need 2 more coats. Got a fan on it right now to speed drying along.

These little finishing touches just take so much time but they're really worth it in the end.

I started with some of the spackle out on the stairwell trim while I was waiting for things to dry since I already had it out, but it's nowhere near complete. I also filled in the two bad places that needed wood filler over there yesterday. I'll be caulking and spackling a whole day when I do that and the trim I put up mid-way on the walls in the basement room. That's for another day.

If I don't call it a day after finishing with the white paint, I may put one coat of the dark grey on the medicine cabinet and decorative shelf. That's all that remains to be painted for the bathroom after the white is done today, unless I make any egregious errors cutting out things for electric or hanging the two cabinets.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 8:08 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Housework sure piles up if I don't attend to!

Spent a couple of days in hospital with hubby after a planned operation, and a few days before that doing yardwork. So yesterday I spent all afternoon, I kid you not, doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. At least I patched my torn work shirt with a couple of iron on patches.

Today was all paperwork... making appts, filling out my ballot, writing up a menu and grocery list, following up on some Rx that went astray... Gotta go drop off my ballot (so many positions didn't have anyone worth voting for!) and pick up an Rx.

So much going on here and there, it's hard to keep track.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 8:35 PM

Ditto.

Done with the white paint in the bathroom. Toilet Paper holder is installed and caulked in. Window is all finished and all the trim in there except for the baseboard is too.

Basically only 1 wall left to go with the electric and cabs. I'm just not going to button up the electric on the entry wall until I know I'm done working on it is all. I've already got the nice upgraded outlet/switch/plate since I bought for the whole house back when I got all that stuff.

Just the decorative shelf, the medicine cabinet and the shelf for the toilet cab left to paint. I don't think I'm going to do it tonight. I'm happy with what got tone today, along with the other stuff I got done outside of the bathroom. I'll have to try to find something to use the rest of the wood filler on before it goes bad. I'm sure there's something, but I'm done with all the things I intended to do with that batch.

No reason to bother showing any pictures today. Everything I got done today now looks like it did in those low-quality pics.

That's kind of an interesting thing about low quality cameras. You know your job is finished and done well when it looks better in real life than it does in the picture. Because up until you hit that point, the low quality pictures make everything look better than it actually is.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 9:58 PM

Damn... I forgot that I do have an immediate and near-immediate use for the rest of the wood filler. The medicine cabinet came with two obviously original holes at the top and bottom brace for screwing into the wall, but somebody put some new ones off center. I filled those after-market holes in before painting because I won't be using them. There were also dowels put in 2 holes each on the top and bottom, likely to hide screws that attached the tops to the sides, but one of them was missing. I just filled them all in and you won't see anything after it's painted.

Still working on the computer thing in the background. In a few days I should be to the point where I can see what happens if I try to install all of this on a Mac.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 11:09 PM

Awesome...

Just finally got around to doing some investigating on measurements, and the original 4 screw holes in the back of the medicine cabinet are going to all drill right into solid wood behind that drywall. The same guy who did that horror show electric job appears to have built the hell out of the wall on the top and bottom when framing out a hole for the in-wall unit that was there before.

The width between the screws had me a little concerned since it's only 12" and I know at least the 2 studs there I can see are 16" on center. But because this unit is quite a bit taller than the old one, those screw holes are going to be right over horizontal 2x4's that were added in for a different purpose. That should be amazingly easy to install vs what I thought it might entail.

Getting that toilet cab where I want it is going to prove tricky though. Once I find out where the studs are back there, I'm going to have to do some good measurements and pre-drill all the pilot holes (pretty thick ones too).

Maybe I can ask my neighbor to come over one day and help hold it up while I screw it in. Not only am I going to have to get this thing lined up with those holes, but I'm also adding an electric box through the back of it that needs to all be lined up perfectly too.

I'm a little nervous about that step. I've never actually hung a cabinet before.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 11:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Doesn't matter which ones, or if you actually finish them in that time frame, but at least you're chipping away at them. Maybe writing up a to-do list of things you would do if you worked on them only 2 hours a week is what you could spend the first week on. 2 hours a week doesn't really sound like much, but one year from now that's 104 hours if you stick with it. Imagine what you could do right now if you spent 104 straight hours working on things.

I always find, without fail, that the hardest part about doing a job is starting it.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

Amen, brother.

I use some of those mental tricks myself. List- making is important to me!

Another one is taking "before, during, and after" pictures, especially if irsa big project. I frame to photo to take in one meaningful portion at a time. That forces me to stay focused.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

I really need to get back into making lists. I used to have a list that was up on my computer every day of things to-do immediately, short-term goals and long-term goals. I also kept the list of "DONE" things at the bottom of it, since it's just a text doc and cutting and pasting stuff is quick. That was nice being able to look at all the things I'd already done vs. what still needed to be done.

I'm the exact same way about pictures myself, and I've really got to do something about my current situation regarding photos. My old tablet that I used to take pics on isn't working, and I'm using an ancient crap camera right now. Believe it or not, it's making me take a lot less pictures than I normally would. I believe until these last few months, my entire picture library just on this house alone is over 3,000 pics.

I agree with you on all of this. I believe it's very important to be able to go back and reflect on what you used to live with vs. what you've done for yourself because after the new becomes your new normal, it's easy to forget just how bad things were before and all of the awesome things that you've accomplished over time.

I REALLY can't wait to get this place done, and I plan on having a small collection of photos showing off the wreckage I started out with and where it will ultimately be. I'll probably just have some slideshows going on all the TVs through the house when I'm showing it all off.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 1:41 AM

Trying to make my project worthwhile on an HD 1/10th the size is proving to be a bit more time consuming than I thought it would be.

Initial decisions were easy and huge. If you had only a 2TB drive you'd get about 90% of the content using 2.5TB less than the 5TB drive. But when you're getting to the end of it though and you're purging small things for small space savings, that seems to go on forever....

But doing that keeps me from having to make some difficult choices. I'll still have to make a few, but it won't be too bad after this reorg.

And really, doing this is just icing for small drives. It allows for it to be used on things with much lower specs, but it's also very easy to add the full thing with a 5 or 6TB drive attached to it after the fact. This backup will probably get some heavy use in the not too distant future once I get some of the real world things taken care of.

I really want to dehoard that small bedroom, which is half filled with clothes other people have given me over the years. And I probably could get rid of half of the clothes I owned before I took all of that in too. I can't even really get in there yet though because a bunch of bathroom stuff and the 2-step ladder I'm using to work in there is just kind of in the way of everything, so that's the next job after the bathroom is done. I'll probably have nothing left on the computer stuff to do for a while but long cloning processes, so that will be perfect for me to be doing all this other stuff in between.

It's getting late, but I hope to finish all of this before I go to bed so I can have the cloning process running while I sleep.

Once that's done, I get to crack open an old Mac Mini and see what its guts look like.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 7:03 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I'm trying to decide what to do next. Most immediately I have to refill family meds and pick some up for hubby, and next three weeks are gonna be lots of doctor appointments that just happenedto pile up in the same month. But weather continues reasonable so I guess I should be working outdoors as time permits. What I SHOULD do is prepare the yard for professional tree trimmers bc there are a lot of trip hazards where they might be working.

But I think I'm gonna focus on the front yard instead and do some more grading and trimming.

Yep! That feels right! That's what I'm gonna do!

First things after meds tomorrow is get myself a pole pruner.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 12:51 PM

Out soon and I have to check the weather. Missed it last night so have to see what it is suppose to do.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 4:23 PM

Draggin' ass today lol...

Fiddled around a bit with the computer project that I did not complete last night before I went to sleep, and not really much else so far.

I'd like to at least get one coat of paint on that shelf and the medicine cabinet if nothing else. If I start painting and I really get into it, I could probably paint a 2nd coat on things shortly after the first coat is finished just because of the intricacy of everything. It's nice and cool in the basement so it's easy to cover the paint stuff to keep it from drying on me in between.

I'm confident that everything will need 3 coats. The cabinet might not really, but the extra protection from humidity is always welcome. But after needing 3 coats for that toilet paper holder simply because of the weird brush angles inside of the box, there's zero chance I'll cover everything on that shelf with only 2 coats. And really, I can't even make that a goal of mine because I need to be using that paint very sparingly or it will make drip marks everywhere.

I think I found the boxes that I need to use for the electric. I figured they'd be about $5 each and I wasn't wrong. What a ripoff for those old construction boxes, but it is what it is.

Once I buy those, my rebates will be exhausted and I will have spent $4 so far on this remodel.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 5:13 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Draggin' ass today lol...

Jeez! Well, of course!
You've been blazing away for how long, now?

Quote:
Fiddled around a bit with the computer project that I did not complete last night before I went to sleep, and not really much else so far.

I'd like to at least get one coat of paint on that shelf and the medicine cabinet if nothing else. If I start painting and I really get into it, I could probably paint a 2nd coat on things shortly after the first coat is finished just because of the intricacy of everything. It's nice and cool in the basement so it's easy to cover the paint stuff to keep it from drying on me in between.

I'm confident that everything will need 3 coats. The cabinet might not really, but the extra protection from humidity is always welcome. But after needing 3 coats for that toilet paper holder simply because of the weird brush angles inside of the box, there's zero chance I'll cover everything on that shelf with only 2 coats. And really, I can't even make that a goal of mine because I need to be using that paint very sparingly or it will make drip marks everywhere.

I think I found the boxes that I need to use for the electric. I figured they'd be about $5 each and I wasn't wrong. What a ripoff for those old construction boxes, but it is what it is.

Once I buy those, my rebates will be exhausted and I will have spent $4 so far on this remodel.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

. Well, that's what I call cost- effective!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 5:50 PM

All done for today.

And after looking at something it looks like my RL paperwork problem is solved. Thank goodness.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 5:57 PM

Heh... yup.

If you want to be realistic about it and not count the rebates as freebies, I'll still be around $40. No... That's not even true. I spent $37 in rebates last week, but two of the things I bought was another bucket of primer and a tube of painter's caulk since I didn't realize I already had an old tube and I was getting to the end of my only bucket of primer left.

And now the bathroom is essentially "done" as far as all that goes, and I haven't even opened either of them. (They will get used, just not necessary for the bathroom).

So really... The only things that I've bought for this remodel so far that I didn't already have on hand were the two $5 8ft pieces of quarter round, and the two $5 junction boxes I'll be buying this week.

Okay... So I'm $20 into the bathroom remodel so far.

It really will be the toilet that determines what this job costs.

I've got 6 or 7 porcelain tile choices out in the garage, and if one of the two buckets of adhesive my friend gave me is still good, that's more free material.

I haven't decided if I want to make a tile baseboard or just put trim up yet. It can look really great with the tiles if done right, but I've never actually done it before and that would add a lot of unnecessary time to the project with my perfectionism for sure. I'll probably just go with trim. I really do not like working with porcelain tiles or doing flooring of any kind, actually, so I'll probably be very sick of tile by the time the floor is in and I'll be reaching for trim instead.

That being said, when I was out looking for the toilet paper holder in the garage, I found an 8ft length of PVC baseboard I forgot I'd bought many years ago to cap off the two pillars on the front porch. But I've never gotten around to doing any of the work I need to out there, so I might just take that and repurpose it for this job. Probably not a bad idea to put PVC baseboard back in anyhow, and it's really nice and thick baseboard like I have all around the rest of the house.

I'm just hoping that PVC is easy to work with because I'm going to have to do some coping on the ends to get it to fit around the quarter round. The minuscule piece that I'll be putting in between the door frame and the quarter round on the other side is going to be stupid hard to make I think. I may just use one of my leftover scrap pieces of the old wood baseboard to make that piece if the PVC is stupid hard to work with. They might not be exactly the same size or height even, but it's all on its own on the other side of the bathroom without anything to compare it to other than the 3" or so where I'll have base on the other side of the door frame up to the vanity. I may just make both of those small pieces out of wood if I have to.

It is looking possible like after the $20 I've spent when I get these boxes, the only things I'll actually be paying for on this entire job is the tile grout and the toilet.

I don't even really know what toilets cost yet, but my old man seems to think that I'm highballing the price I'm going to pay for one. I thought like $400 for a good one for sure, but he seems to think I'm not going to spend more than about $250.

$325 or less for a half-bathroom remodel in 2026 that's going to add a whole lot of functionality on top of looking great?

Not too shabby.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 6:14 PM

I'm trying to figure out my vanity light fixture without any instructions.

It's weird. There's nothing inside of it that is designed to screw into a junction box at all. There are just two holes on the face, and I didn't get my tape out yet but the holes line up with the corners of a 4" electrical box, so they're more than 4" apart.

I dunno, but I think I'm going to have to put drywall anchors back there like they had and screw this into the wall after I've screwed the ground cable into the box I'll be putting up behind it.

I'm glad these walls are built like freakin' tanks, because when the 3 glass shades are added to it, I'll bet that fixture is pretty heavy. We're not talking thin, cheapo glass here.

I think I'm probably missing some sort of universal kit that came with it when it was new. I'll have to put some thought into how I want to do that and ensure it's not going to fall down and bring part of the wall down with it one day years down the road. Even if I was attaching it directly to an "old construction" box that's attached to nothing but the drywall this could still be a problem, but it looks as though I have no way to do that anyhow.

At least there's no pull-chain on it.

Hmmmmm.....

I might have to add another $10 or so to the price for two screws. I know I have plenty of drywall anchors, but I might not have drywall screws that are long enough for the job. I'm going to have to go out in my garage again and see if there are any stray screws or anything at all up on the shelf where I had a bunch of this stuff sitting for years. Unless there were some designer screws or screws with caps intended to be put on top to hide the fact there are screws there, I'm thinking I have to use drywall screws because the black should blend in better with the oil rubbed bronze than any screws you'd typically use to put a fixture into the wall. I'd really love to add some washers to that if that's what I'm going to do, but even if I spray paint them oil-rubbed bronze, I think that would be a lot more visible to the casual eye than I'd like it to be.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 6:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I like the idea of PVC baseboard. One of the problems with wood baseboard in a bathroom, especially around the toilet, is if you get a leak the wood gets ruined. OTOH near the door, a wood piece should be safe.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 7:58 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I like the idea of PVC baseboard. One of the problems with wood baseboard in a bathroom, especially around the toilet, is if you get a leak the wood gets ruined. OTOH near the door, a wood piece should be safe.

Yeah. You didn't miss out by not seeing the grossness that was under that tiny piece I removed over there. If I can get PVC in there and seal everything off real good, I'll feel better about it than if I've got wood over there. It's far away from the toilet, but it's still right next to the tub. I don't think I was the messy guy that put that mold there, and it was just hiding under that tiny baseboard for the last 14 years at least.

If I go with wood for that tiny piece I'll make sure a ton of paint goes on it all around.

As far as around the toilet? All the subfloor around it is rotting and is going to need to be replaced. I forgot about that when talking about costs. I do have quite a bit of proper wood for the job out in the garage, but it depends on if I have the right thickness. It's such a small bathroom I think I can get away with buying one of their steeply discounted "scrap" pieces, but the most I should have to buy is a half-sheet of plywood if I don't have what I need.

I haven't researched what I should do before I put the tile down either. Other than cutting tiles I never really did much or wasn't even around on days where tiles were being installed. I think I might have to see if my friend has one of those staplers and I might have to buy a thin sheet of wood to put over the old stuff and staple it down first. I know I've pulled plenty of those off of floors after removing tiles before.

I'm going to have some pictures tonight. I sanded down all the wood filler and just got my first coat of paint on the shelf and medicine cabinet. I believe that took me about 90 minutes, but I didn't time it.

WORTH IT.

Boy... Everything... but that shelf especially, is going to look awesome.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 8:52 PM

So.... About 45-50 minutes just to put a coat of paint on the shelf. That sounds about right.

Two coats on it now and it's covering a LOT better than I thought it would after I objectively needed a 3rd coat on that toilet paper holder last night. I think I could probably get away with just the two, actually, but I'm going to do 3.

I would have done the medicine cabinet a 2nd time before I took a break, but it's still a little more wet inside the box than I'd like. I don't want to put fans on down there becuase I don't feel like doing all the dust cleanup around horses and crap that I'd need to do before I added wind to the equation.

First coat dried awesome on the cab though. You can't even see the damage on the top or the holes for the screws with just one coat.

And the wood grain....

Boy... I thought that looked nice peeking out through all of my white trim and cabinets. It looks awesome with that dark gray. I'll have to get a better camera situation so I can show you the wood grain on all of this.

This is cool. At most, I have one more day of painting these things if I don't stay up late and do all 3 coats tonight. Plenty of paint to do the job, although I don't think I would have had enough to paint the window wall darker with this stuff, so I'm glad I decided not to do that. If I used my lamb's wool roller for this job, I think the roller itself would have sucked up what will be left when I'm done painting these last 3 things.

Once that painting is done, it's going to force me up off my ass and out of the house to buy that electric. Up until right now there were so many things to do that it was always on the backburner. I'm probably going to take an entire day just measuring things 10 times and planning out exactly where everything needs to be hung.

I hate hanging picture frames. I don't think I'm going to enjoy hanging cabinets.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 9:05 PM

NICE!

I was thinking about what I would need for that light fixture and it occurred to me that I could probably buy a part or a kit to do the job right. I'm remembering rings and crosses that I had saved for 30 years in my electrical stuff, so I might actually have something out in the garage that will work, but I do think I may have thrown that out during a dehoard... I'm not sure.

If I need to buy one, it looks like that's another $5 on the job.

*(And just to be safe with all of this, if I can't find a better solution or original hardware, I'm going to paint the tips of the screws with the spray primer and rubbed bronze paint as well as a few small washers. I just don't like the idea of the screws holding in that unit without the support of washers since it's hollow and rather flimsy metal. I'm sure I'm the only person who will ever notice that.)

I'll have to put my glass shades on my digital scale and see how much they actually weigh. The fixture itself couldn't be more than a pound or two. They say if the fixture is over 15 lbs that the junction box needs to be attached to a stud.

I'd probably have quite a bit more leeway because of the crazy thick "drywall" I've got, but I don't ever put in any electric that's not up to Code, so hopefully those shades aren't more than 3.5 pounds or so each.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 10:08 PM

Alright, alright... 2 of 3 coats for everything done now.

My lighting down there isn't the best when the sun is down. There's 4 recessed lights. IN the center they probably had a fan like they did in the far room down there, as dangerous as that had to be unless you were a family of hobbits. I really should get around to getting a proper light for the center down there. It would really be helping me out right now.

You'll see the pictures later sometime, but I'm not kidding about that woodgrain with the grey paint.

I just realized something as I was down there painting today... My step dad was wrong when he always said that painting wood is a sin. I understand that fixing that "sin" is a large part of what he did in his business, but it just occurs to me now that it was so easy to agree with him back then about it because every painted piece of wood that came into that shop looked like absolute shit.

I didn't "IKEA" this stuff up by putting paint on it. It's just a different way of displaying the beauty of wood, even if it is objectively less natural than his way.

And that's just the thing. He never saw a well done painted piece in his shop that was done by an artist. Those are all still well taken care of and in nice houses with people who appreciate them. All he was getting was the ones that had all the paint flaking off, or paint dribbles abound over something that my Step-Dad was able to make look like it had the original stain from back in the 1700's once he and my mom were done doing their artistry with it.

The one thing you don't get with natural wood is the fierce contrast of shadow play. The shadows are still there of course, but the wood grain interferes with it. Detracts from it... There's nothing but whites and greys in most of my rooms now, and the way rooms look at different times of the day, especially when standing in one room and looking through to other rooms is a really cool effect.

I'm going to have to snap some pictures from down in the living room up into the bathroom when it's done to show you what I mean. But even that is going to pale in comparison to what it will look like when I finally construct the banisters for the stairs to tie into that overlook.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 10:50 PM

Shadow play...

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 11:15 PM

Mah jong for me in the morning.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 12:00 AM

Good luck, Brenda. May you win before I even wake up for the day.

I just noticed that even my shadows have bevels...

I love working with greyscale.

Back in my young, dumb days when I always carried a sketch book around me and thought I was going to go to the Art Institute of Chicago, I always had my set of black charcoal pencils with me. It was pretty rare I ever did any work in color unless that was part of the assignment.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 3:20 AM

I'm thinking about being a bit naughty with the electric...

I had a thought that I might be able to go up with the electric from the basement. But the walls on both sides are mostly hung at the top since I only cut out up to where the water damage was on both sides. If I could even get under there and up with it, I'd have to have a powerful drill with about a 4.5 foot long wood drill bit, and that's not exactly a job I want to be doing in the dark with drain pipes all over the place.

But...

The ceiling in the basement bathroom doesn't exist aside from a soffit with a few can lights in them that somebody needed to make to go around the drain pipe for the toilet above...

So I was thinking...

Rather than drill through a 2x4 plate or two without having any idea what comes after that, what if I drilled up through the floor toward the back of the vanity, and fed a length of something down through the old medicine cabinet hole into a nice big square hole I cut in the wall back there where nobody will ever see it with the drawer in the way?

I'd just have maybe a few inches of the electric coming up through the floor under and behind the drawer in the back, and then going directly back into the wall and up to the junction box I'm going to install in the medicine cabinet hole. Then that always-on connection can be brought over to the left for the toilet cabinet and it won't be controlled by the light switch.

I'm going to have to look into code for sure, because this electric is close to water lines and drain pipes. I may have to buy a pricey length of some outdoor-rated romex or something to do this up to code.

It will still be a bitch, but a much more manageable bitch to do it this way. I think I can make this work.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 3:41 AM

Here's what I'm thinking...

I REALLY love my nightlight in the bathroom and it's bonkers I had 2 of those for years just unopened in the attic without getting any use.

I really kinda want to see what it would be like in there if I had a 2nd night light inside the nook of the over-the-toilet box and have 2 feint light sources in the bathroom at night.

This is the only way I'm going to be able to do it since I have no interest in bashing down walls and drilling through studs.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 4:31 AM

New plan, I think...

That will be close, but I've got to do it to code.

The electric coming from the floor needs to be any form of rigid conduit, at least 6" high in the cabinet before it goes anywhere.

But the good news is that you only need 1" clearance between electric and water pipes. I should be able to poke a hole up through the floor and another hole in the floor of the cabinet above the drawer, behind the two drawers on the right side. Then I can have hard pipe coming up from the basement, at least 6 inches above the floor to a junction box. Then I should just be able to fish whatever flex electric I want down through the medicine cabinet hole and pull it right out through that hole in the wall with the plumbing that I cleaned up and framed out before painting. I'm sure there's some way that I can affix that to the wall at the top and bottom that will ensure it's at least 1" away from water pipes and if those pipes ever leaked it wouldn't leak on the electric.

Not the most elegant of solutions, but I should be able to make it safe, up to code and also hide anything that I'm doing from everyday normal use of everything.

Oh... I should also see if they make some sort of large rubber washers that would fit snugly on conduit pipe. I'm also required to seal off the opening in the floor, and I may as well do it in the cabinet too. If I had thick rubber washers around the pipe, I could just put some silicone on it and press it down on the floor and water would never get in there.

I'm getting all excited about this idea, but I shouldn't just yet. It all sounds great until I go down into the basement and realize just how damn hard this is actually going to be. I don't know how I'm going to do all this work above that soffit yet or if there's really any room to be doing drilling and the like. Plus, I really don't know the map of electric down there. Sure... it would be easy to just grab electric from one of the can lights, but that's on a switch too. The closet is on the other side of that wall, and there is electric in there, but I might have to bust down some walls there to get to it too.

I'm more open to doing that though if it's absolutely necessary. It will be a long time before I'm remodling that room, and all the drywall in the basement is regular drywall and not the concrete/plaster stuff they built the rest of the house with.

In the meantime, this shouldn't slow down putting up the toilet cabinet and the towel bar when they're all ready to go. I'm still going to be cutting out the same hole in the wall for a new electric outlet regardless of where the source is coming from. As long as I have that box installed and electric to it attached to the junction box, I can make up my mind later on how much effort I really want to put into the source.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 5:06 PM

Well, lousy morning at mah jong. Had some horrible hands and one where I could only give myself 10points. You do that when you have nothing to count in your hand or on the board. Talk about yuck!

Otherwise all done for now. Working up the courage to try and download my pictures and aaaggghh!

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 5:52 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Oh gosh, BRENDA, that really WAS a bad hand! Maybe luck will even it out with a really good day soon.
Where are your photos now, and where are you transferring them to? Just curious!

SIX, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about paint and grain. But your idea about light and shadow showing up better on painted surfaces... I never thought of that before, but it really would make details like beading etc really stand out, wouldn't it?
Hubby is a woodworker, and for him seeing and matching grain is very important. He slways goes with clear finishes like tung oil. So I guess in that way he's more like your stepdad. Painting wood is a sin!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 6:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about paint and grain. But your idea about light and shadow showing up better on painted surfaces... I never thought of that before, but it really would make details like beading etc really stand out, wouldn't it?
Hubby is a woodworker, and for him seeing and matching grain is very important. He slways goes with clear finishes like tung oil. So I guess in that way he's more like your stepdad. Painting wood is a sin!

My point is that I don't have any beading, and that it's not fair for a woodworker/furniture restorer to crap on painting wood when all they've ever seen is pieces that come in because the paint job was terrible. And I'm just mentioning that you can still see all of the wood grain through the paint. That's why it doesn't look like IKEA furniture, because everything you buy painted there is completely, solidly flat and isn't made of real wood.

People are going to have their preferences, but when you paint something well (and I am talking top-tier painting), I think it looks just as good top-tier stain and poly.

I'm just glad the culture kind of caught up with me on that one. The first time I saw a house trimmed out in white in some TV show or movie years ago I knew that's what I wanted to do. Now you see it everywhere.

But I'm willing to bet that most of it doesn't look as good as mine does.

Anyway... I think I'm abandoning the idea of an always-on outlet for the toilet cab. That code stating that the electric coming into the cabinet needs to be hard pipe kind of ruined the idea. I don't even see any way for me to put in a piece of conduit long enough for the job from inside the cabinet, and because of the soffit in the bathroom in the basement, there doesn't appear to be a way to put one up from the bottom either. Even if there was, the electric down there is a rat's nest and after 15 minutes of looking at everything I still have zero gameplan on that. With the ceiling open, I'm counting at least three junction boxes up there that would be completely hidden and inaccessible if I put anything but a dropped ceiling in there, which is against code, and from the bottom half where there is no drywall I'm not seeing anything that makes any sense about what they've done. I just don't want to deal with all of that right now. I just want my bathroom back.

I suppose technically it doesn't need to be done right now and could be done later if I ever changed my mind. I'm not going to be caulking in either of the cabinets. I'm not even going to cover up the old medicine cabinet hole since this cab is much larger and will cover it completely once screwed in. If I ever wanted to remove the medicine cabinet to get to electric again, all I would have to do is unzip 4 screws that will be holding it into the wall with drywall anchors and I'll have all the access that's currently available to me, and it would be easy enough to tie the new electric into it.

Oh well... I said last night I shouldn't get too excited about the idea.

I'm going to have to make a decision soon on the height of everything too so I can cut out a hole for the electrical box since fishing that flex line through the 2 rows of studs is not going to be easy like I thought it would be. I think it's impossible to even try without having a hole on the other side. Had I lucked out and the studs in between lined up better, I think this could have been pretty easy, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

I don't think I am going to have to destroy any wall that isn't going to be covered by the cabinet, but in order to not do that I might have to dig out my 90 degree drill and hope I can find some wood drill bits that are longer than 16" so I can drill through a few studs to feed the line directly through them.

If I do anything on the bathroom today, it will be putting the final coat on the medicine cabinet and the shelf. It's already getting late and I'm thinking it's probably not going to happen before sundown. Tomorrow is another day.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 11:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh gosh, BRENDA, that really WAS a bad hand! Maybe luck will even it out with a really good day soon.
Where are your photos now, and where are you transferring them to? Just curious!

SIX, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about paint and grain. But your idea about light and shadow showing up better on painted surfaces... I never thought of that before, but it really would make details like beading etc really stand out, wouldn't it?
Hubby is a woodworker, and for him seeing and matching grain is very important. He slways goes with clear finishes like tung oil. So I guess in that way he's more like your stepdad. Painting wood is a sin!

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

It was a horrible hand SIG. I very rarely get hands that those.

The tv photos are on my computer here and I am trying to put them on a USB stick. But alas my hand was shaking badly, bad directions. One mistake nothing bad but it freaked me out enough that I gave up for today.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 3:23 AM

Nice...

Though I didn't get any work on the bathroom done, I did wrap up the curated build and I've just finished creating a burnable image of it. Now I'm going to overwrite the first build I had on one of my new externals with this one to test out that it works.

Messing with that Mac Mini might be a little more difficult than I originally thought it would. It's old enough where there isn't an HDMI port. What a weird connection it has, with a mini DVI output. Fortunately, I should be able to still connect it to the TV because it has an adapter to HDMI, but that means there won't be any sound. Maybe it's possible I can use the headphone jack and connect that directly to the soundbar and get sound that way? I'm pretty sure that without a soundbar you'd be completely SOL trying to get an old Mac to work on a TV because of that, but the soundbar might work.

I'm glad I didn't throw out that Samsung soundbar that's missing the subwoofer. The one week I was going to put it out with the trash for somebody to take it, but it was raining so I kept it in the garage until it was a nice day on trash day. If I end up giving this thing away, I can at least have a way for it to output some amount of sound if the person doesn't already have a soundbar in their setup.

I wonder how easy or hard it would be to get the drive out of there to clone. Unfortunately, I have to do it that way and I can't just install the whole build from an external drive. Hopefully in the future the software available to us allows for that, but if I want to use this thing I'm going to have to figure out how to open it without breaking it.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 4:23 AM

Not too hopeful about the Mac. The good news is that it was old enough where it had full sized USB inputs so I didn't need adapters for the mouse/keyboard/thumbdrive. It didn't come with a power cord either, but surprisingly I had one that fit.

I powered it up and I get a blinking folder with a question mark inside it which I guess is code that it can't find the OS for one reason or another. That alone isn't terrible news, because this thing is so old that it uses a 2.5" laptop hard drive and not the SSD sticks that the ones a few years later started using. If the drive is bad, I do have spares to try out.

But the real problem for me is that most times I power up the thing I don't even get to the folder. My TV just doesn't recognize it the whole time. Even the few times it did, there was no sort of BIOS or any text on screen at all until the folder came up. I don't have any clue how Apple products work at all, so troubleshooting is not something I can easily do, and trying to find relevant information on a Mac Mini from before 2014 in 2026 isn't very helpful either.

I've opened it up from the bottom and removed a few screws here and there, but I still can't figure out how to slip the guts out of the side of it. There must be at least one more screw I cant see holding it in. Oh well.. It's too dark to be messing with that now. I'll look tomorrow when the sun's up. I was really hoping to at least try this thing out and see if it was worth keeping before I chucked it, but tomorrow I think I'm going to make a quick decision that this is just going in the trash. I've got enough on my plate without adding a week of antique Mac troubleshooting to the list.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 5:05 AM

OOPS!

I must really have not wanted to try to figure out how to work on old Macs.

I had to pull my flashlight out to see what the memory sticks it was rocking were anyhow, so I found a few more screws while I was at it. Those didn't help either. It turns out I had enough of them out to pull SOME of the innards out all along... It just took a LOT of force. But they did not slide out all in one piece like the 2018 model did on a youtube video, and using so much force to slide it out because it was stuck with old age gunk, I broke some wire connections to bits that were still stuck in there in a way that I'm not ever going to bother fixing. Oh well...

RIP Mac Mini.

The good news is that was back when all the Mac stuff was all x86 / Intel based, so those 2GB sticks in there will probably be upgrading my friend's laptop if that's worth saving. That POS is so slow it wouldn't surprise me if there was only 1 or 2 GB in there. I already had two 2GB sticks from one of my own dead laptops in the attic too, but there's different kinds of memory out there and maybe now we've got a better shot that I've got the right type and it's more than he had in there.

The best news is that the drive itself was fine. Got me a new used 1TB hard drive that's sitting in one of my brand new enclosures right now. Shame it's only 5400RPM, but it can be used as a data drive.

And the side news that was good was just knowing it had a 5400RPM drive and only 4GB worth of memory, it wasn't going to perform any better than that junker old PC I've been messing with, so I don't feel bad that I broke it.

I do have one more Mac that I plan on doing something with. This one's a lot newer and nicer. It's one of those All in One setups that my brother on the east coast gave me when they got a new one. I have no idea what the specs are, but they should dwarf those of the Mini from 2014. Not sure what I'm going to do with that thing yet, but I'm going to be a lot more careful with it. It's probably still new enough to get official Mac OS upgrades and is internet-worthy, so maybe I'll just use it as it was designed once I get myself a nice little desk for my small bedroom.

Other than that, I've got to figure out what I'm going to do with my own All in One Windows PC that I upgraded from around 5 years ago. The one I was trying to install an SSD drive into to speed it up, but found out that it was so old the BIOS didn't even know what SSD was. I'm hoping there's an HDMI out to put it on a larger screen, but even if there isn't I think I can still do something cool with it. At least I know what I'm doing when I'm working with one of those.

That's all the old PCs I was going to mess around with. I've got one other one in the stack, but that's an extra one I bought off some guy a few years back and is identical to the one that I've been using to do all of this work and just a backup in case that breaks on me.

This will be good. Now that I don't have to mess around with the Mac Mini anymore and I'm done pulling out the hard drive from that old PC my old man gave me that I've been testing things out with, I can button that thing up and get rid of all the wires and junk I've got all over the living room so I can clean it all up again. Looks like a bomb hit it with all this tech stuff lying around everywhere. I'm still going to be doing work to that PC before it finds its new home, but it doesn't need to be open anymore.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 10:28 AM

Nice...

After a bit of a scare, I got that old PC all sealed up and working right. I have no explanation for why it fixed itself, but I had all sorts of boot problems. I couldn't even get it to boot from an external at one point. It was like my BIOS settings got all out of wack there or something. Had to do a factory reset on that and get everything running right again, but not after resetting the memory half a dozen times and even pulling the drive back out to test on another computer first. Weird.

So I've got two very different images for very different build purposes that are verified as working now, and I'll be working on a downgraded version that could work just fine on a 64GB thumbstick which could later be added to with larger external storage. This will make it as modular and easy to distribute as possible.

Mac is in the trash and I'm sitting on 4 decent sized externals I didn't have a month ago and about 8TB of free space on my regularly used drives I didn't have 3 months ago.

I should put the last coat of paint on those pieces today.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 1:57 PM

Out in a minute on what is suppose to be a wet day at some point.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 5:05 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SIX. Apple specifically designs things NOT to be taken apart so you HAVE to send them in for repair! It's a gotcha, just like their software.

For older PCs, sometimes pulling drives, cards, memory sticks, and connectors and putting them back in again is what's required. Whenever hubby got a failed PC that's the first thing he would do because over time, connections corrode.

Another thing is to clean the PC overall, the vents, and the heat sink specifically with blasts of compressed air. As you've posted, electronics like to work in the cold and PCs need to breathe. If you're looking at an old HDD, and the drive motor isn't starting up, tapping the HDD on edge can get it unstuck.
On occasion he'd put an HDD in the frig for a bit to get important data off of it.
IDK if any of that applies, but that was his first troubleshooting procedure.

Glad it's working for you again!

Oh BTW your paint job is amazing. IDK how you managed to paint such complex shapes so evenly, w/o drips and sags, and not bury the workpiece in hugely thick coats. For me, that would need spray paint and even then I'm not sure it would look as good. I'm seriously impressed!

*****

Oh, BRENDA. It's hard to get anything done if your hands are shaking that badly. Is there anything you can do about that?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX. Apple specifically designs things NOT to be taken apart so you HAVE to send them in for repair! It's a gotcha, just like their software.

For older PCs, sometimes pulling drives, cards, memory sticks, and connectors and putting them back in again is what's required. Whenever hubby got a failed PC that's the first thing he would do because over time, connections corrode.

Another thing is to clean the PC overall, the vents, and the heat sink specifically with blasts of compressed air. As you've posted, electronics like to work in the cold and PCs need to breathe. If you're looking at an old HDD, and the drive motor isn't starting up, tapping the HDD on edge can get it unstuck.
On occasion he'd put an HDD in the frig for a bit to get important data off of it.
IDK if any of that applies, but that was his first troubleshooting procedure.

Glad it's working for you again!

Oh BTW your paint job is amazing. IDK how you managed to paint such complex shapes so evenly, w/o drips and sags, and not bury the workpiece in hugely thick coats. For me, that would need spray paint and even then I'm not sure it would look as good. I'm seriously impressed!

*****

Oh, BRENDA. It's hard to get anything done if your hands are shaking that badly. Is there anything you can do about that?

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

The worst of it SIG is that I am a righty. So really about all I try to do is take it off the mouse or stop writing for a bit. Then when I go back to what I was doing to try and concentrate on it to try and stop it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:10 PM

Cold when I went out and it rained a little. Warmed up and nice and dry on my way. Managed to get a little more cleaned up around here. Which is good.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 10:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX. Apple specifically designs things NOT to be taken apart so you HAVE to send them in for repair! It's a gotcha, just like their software.

Oh... I know they do that now. I remember a few years ago how much hot glue they started sticking inside their machines to screw over the repair shops. I think I could have gotten this out without breaking anything if I really cared enough to try, but I think subconsciously I already made up my mind that the hard drive was all I was really interested after the thing didn't just start on the first power up. The 2018 model in a YT video simply slid right out of the back all in one piece after removing some screws, a metal fence with an antenna attachment and the fan. Not the case here... Half of the stuff was off the board in the back, and that's where I ripped a few wires out because of the force I had to use to slide the front half out with it being all gunked up over time. My brother was still a smoker and didn't go outside like I do when he owned this, so nicotine may have played a pretty big part here. Oh well... I was happy to find out that the specs on it were just as bad as the old PC I was working with except for the hard drive that was double the size space-wise, while also being a laptop sized drive that could fit in one of my externals. (The PC has a huge old brick of a desktop 500GB drive inside).

Quote:
For older PCs, sometimes pulling drives, cards, memory sticks, and connectors and putting them back in again is what's required. Whenever hubby got a failed PC that's the first thing he would do because over time, connections corrode.

Oh yeah... Built tons of PCs too, and I used to smoke right by them all the time for years too. Been there, done that.

Quote:
Another thing is to clean the PC overall, the vents, and the heat sink specifically with blasts of compressed air. As you've posted, electronics like to work in the cold and PCs need to breathe. If you're looking at an old HDD, and the drive motor isn't starting up, tapping the HDD on edge can get it unstuck.
On occasion he'd put an HDD in the frig for a bit to get important data off of it.
IDK if any of that applies, but that was his first troubleshooting procedure.

Yeah... I've actually succesfully been able to get a drive to start up with the frige trick before, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get the data off of it. I think sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't.

Hard drive was fine. I use CrystalDiskInfo to test the drives, and I used it again when I took the whole thing out of the PC and attached it to the other one to boot off of it and make sure it was still fine.

I really think it was a bios problem that just sort of worked itself out as I played around with it. At one point I couldn't get the computer to start either with the internal drive, or an external that I knew worked. It was also changing my TV screen resolution to 800x600 immediately after the BIOS screen, which my build does not do. So I don't really know what it was doing.

I have to honestly say I don't know what I changed that fixed the problem, but I am pretty sure that I caused it when I pulled out the memory to get a better look at it. That's the only physical thing I did differently than before by the time I'd buttoned it up. I've been using this thing for weeks now, on it's side, with one wall of the case removed and everything wide open, and booting from about 6 different drives with no problem. It just waited to give me a problem after I'd put the thing all back together again for the "final" time, because of course it did.

Quote:
Glad it's working for you again!

Me too.

Quote:
Oh BTW your paint job is amazing. IDK how you managed to paint such complex shapes so evenly, w/o drips and sags, and not bury the workpiece in hugely thick coats. For me, that would need spray paint and even then I'm not sure it would look as good. I'm seriously impressed!

Thanks.

I meant to write about that as I was painting and thinking about it the other day. I don't know why I made the change in my hand-painting style, but it was a really great change. I think sometimes I come back to things like painting after being away from them for so long that I just do it a little different than I did it the last time I painted. And I think what eventually happens is I either fall back completely into the way I always do it, or if what I'm doing now is working that becomes my new normal.

As I paint now, I'm treating the entire piece like a canvas and an artist palette at the same time.

I'm working with only one color, so what I mean is when I get more paint for my brush, I purposefully put the bulk of the paint I just picked up somewhere other than directly where I'm painting, then I go back to that "blob" I left there and start smoothing it out along the way as I use it up elsewhere. And then I go back and do a final "wipe" to get a nice brush pattern.

Not only does this method basically eliminate any drips and pooling in inside corners, but when you spread out the paint thin instead of putting it on thick, you don't have to be so worried about getting the piece done fast in fear of fighting drying paint and getting that crappy finish that comes when you go back to a side that already had some paint on it that had started drying before you finished off the piece. As long as you're feathering everything out with a brush that isn't thick with paint, when you get back to that last side to button it all up, that feathered out paint has already dried enough where you can just paint right over it to the actual end or corner for a nice finish all around.

I've also been painting against the grain sometimes initially, especially on the primer coat and 1st paint coat when the grain or other imperfections are deep. I also then rub them to go along with the grain after I've filled everything in so you don't have brush marks crossing the grain.

And I noticed about at least a dozen times that I almost unconsciously would put extra paint back into the bucket during the painting, especially when coming to the end of a piece. That's something I don't ever remember doing before.

Like I said, it was about 45-50 minutes for that 2nd coat of paint on that decorative. I didn't time the first two coats, but I would assume that they would have taken even longer since I would have really been making sure to change the color from wood to white, and then from white to grey. The 2nd/3rd coats just go on quicker than the 1st and the primer.

And if you count the time I spent sanding that piece, we're probably looking at about 5 to 6 hours of work just on that one shelf, with 1 more coat of paint left to go.

It's really why I can't make any money doing this. Nobody would ever be able to afford the work unless I was just doing it for fun and accepted minimum wage for the work.

But it's great for me. I've got a whole lot of things in my house now that are super nice that I never would have been able to afford or even allowed myself to spend the money on if I had to buy it all new. And I'll still never get over how awesome it was to get enough trim and baseboard to do the entire house for about $200 on mega-clearance, and then I used a new credit card with a $250 cashback signup bonus to buy it. I remember telling my grandma about it and saying that essentially I just got paid $50 to come over and pick up $1,250 worth of brand new trim.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 12:02 AM

I Have just wasted about an hour looking for an alternative to something that I know exists, but I don't want to pay the asking price for it.

This thing... It's $60.

Because I've got a new idea...

Since I'm not going to bust down any wall, and the code issue requiring hard pipe coming up through the floor makes one option impossible and the other one much harder than I want to deal with right now, I thought of a 3rd option...

What if I had a 2nd switch to the vanity light underneath or on the right side of the medicine cabinet?

The first switch with the outlet next to it that already exists on the wall would still power all of the electric in the bathroom except for the outlet right next to it, BUT if there were an easily accessible 2nd switch only for the light that didn't look horribly out of place, I could leave the main light switch on all the time and still have power to the electrical outlet I'll be putting in the over the toilet cab when the vanity light is off.

Here's a diagram explaining it...

I just can't believe I can't find anything at the local stores or amazon to suit my purposes without spending $60. I don't want to use a standard steel box because that's going to look gaudy no matter where I put it even if I panted it to match the wall or the cabinet. Thin plastic boxes could be good, however, they only seem to sell surface mount which means the hole is in the back. I don't want to be drilling electric through my medicine cabinet for this. They do have plastic boxes that are about 1.25" deep, so I'm considering buying one of those and being extremely careful about drilling a 3/4" hole in the side and then feed the length of flex conduit from the light fixture down to that and through the wall behind the box.

This way I'd have no junction boxes behind the wall and inaccessable (and against code) too. I was going to make things easy on me and put a junction box somewhere in the middle behind the medicine cabinet. I was talking myself into doing this by saying that all you'd have to do to access it is remove 4 screws on the medicine cabinet to take that off, and also that it's a hell of a lot better than the horror show that's behind the wall right now.... But no. I need to do electric right when I come across it, no matter how bad the previous owners screwed me on it.

The plastic box / drilling solution might work, but it's still such a large switch box in the end. I was really hoping to be able to do this in a low-profile way.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 1:11 AM

Nice... I know it's not going to be without its problems, but I do believe that this will work. It looks like it's fine to drill your own holes into a junction box as long as you're not doing so to add in more wires than the box is rated for, and as long as you use a proper connection to the box for what you're tying into it.

Did a few measurements around that area and was surprised to see that there will only be around 3" of clearance from the right side of the medicine cabinet to the wall where the switch and door are. That's excellent news. As long as I can get some flex conduit through the 2x4 square they built out for the old in-wall medicine cabinet and through the wall to the junction box, I can get a switch on there and paint it all the same gray as the wall and it should basically meld right into the background and keep everything up to code with no buried junction boxes.

I'm adding more money to the project though... Damn.

First off, I'll have to buy a step-down drill bit. I've never owned one, but I'm not about to try cutting through PVC on an important job with anything else. That will probably be at least $7 or $8.

I've only got around 6 feet of flex left. I'm going to need more than twice that to do all of this for sure. That's $36 for 25 feet right there if my buddy doesn't have some in his dad's garage that he doesn't mind parting with. I've got switches and covers, but only enough for the house as it was, so that will cost me down the road taking an extra one today. But the box and the switch/cover are incidental. Maybe another $5-$6.

I might have to buy another 3-pack of GFCI outlets too. I thought I had at least one nice and new one left, but all I've found so far were two crappy used ones that I'm not going to be putting in my house. Those aren't cheap, but they're quite a bit cheaper in 3-packs and I know I'm going to need at least one more in my downstairs bathroom if not also in the laundry room, so they will be used if I'm actually out of them.

Everything I'm talking about will be on the CFCI on the wall that I'll be replacing the normal outlet next to the switch with. If that were to trip for any reason, all of this other electric would go cold as well.

ETA: Oh... right... If you're looking at the image above, everything is the same except the 2nd light switch will be on the right side of the cabinet, rather than underneath.

Since the bottom of the medicine cabinet is flat, and it's not particularly a deep cabinet, it wouldn't be hiding anything by putting the switch underneath. And when I reach down inside the opening I can feel at least 3 more 2x4's stacked up on top of each other behind the wall, so there would be no way to do it anyhow (I believe they really built it up because they actually removed a wall stud to make the medicine cabinet hole).

I will probably still have to cut away at least some of the 2x4 frame for that hole to get the flex where I need it, but I'm still not damaging any of my walls doing it this way.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 2:26 AM

Oooh...

I'm excited now. Got everything I need except the flex conduit ordered.

I was wrong about the price of old work junction boxes. They're $16 freaking bucks a piece at Menards and Home Depot around here. Found them on Amazon for half as much. If I didn't mind waiting 9 days for delivery a 3rd party seller was selling them in 2-packs for about $5 cheaper than that, but I'm not going to wait.

The ones I was looking at had the adjustable ears, but that's not the bit I need. I need the "wings" on the side that you can maneuver with screws to really get the box attached solid to the wall in lieu of having a stud to screw into.

Got me a nice decorative plastic junction box to hold the 2nd switch, and a 3-bit step-down drill bit set for making my hole for the flex conduit. I'll just have to make sure I remember to send an extra wire down to that switch to properly ground it since I'm not going with metal. The only metal boxes I could find that were remotely what I needed were for those out of the wall traveller systems and would have been too thin to drill a proper hole for the flex conduit to enter.

Total cost? $2.22 after I spent what was left of my credit card reward points.

I don't buy a lot of stuff and it's been a long time since I stopped tracking money like that and where all my bonus cash was. I just got those drive enclosures the other day for free and I didn't realize that I'd have enough leftover to basically pay for my electrical job.

Awesome.

Now I'm going to find out that over the toilet I'm not even going to need an old work box and I'll have a stud right where I want it. Oh well... I'm sure I can find use for the 2nd one someday and it can just sit in my electrical tote if it needs to, but it's better than being without one and finding out I need it and either waiting few days for delivery or paying twice as much at the store down the street.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 2:54 AM

Okay... I lied.

Totally forgot that I needed to buy a universal light kit.

Glad I really thought that one out and didn't just buy a crossbar like the one's I've seen before. It probably wouldn't have done me any good.

I knew that the two holes in the face of my light fixture were roughly 5" apart from each other. The standard universal stuff is only 4". I measured and it was actually just slightly less than 4.5".

But here's the thing... I found one that has nice little adjustable extension wings on it so you can set it to whatever size you need up to over 5" wide. And the best part is, the long screws come out of the kit itself, you place the vanity over the screws, and then you screw in the (black or silver) metal caps that they give you to get the fixture into the wall tightly.

And what that means above and beyond is I've got a little play with being "perfect" on my hole for the electric. With over a half-inch of extra wingspan that I don't need out of that kit, I could adjust things up to that far either way before screwing the finishing nuts tight to the fixture. I'd never make a mistake that bad, but that's over 1 whole inch of play there if I needed it.

Holy crap.

That's so, so, so, so, so much easier than what I was going to do.

"Yeah dude. Let's buy screws long enough to screw into the junction box from outside the fixture, cut them down to size if I need to and then clean the threads up, spray paint the tips and a few washers with the oil rubbed bronze, and then fight with the vanity and the washer to try to center them absolutely perfectly and hope the spray matches the finish of the fixture well enough that it doesn't catch your eye...

An extra eight bucks very well spent. We'll call the electric $10 so far.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 1:35 PM

Looking good SIX. That light switch you showed you can find them up here all over the place but mostly in newer buildings.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 1:38 PM

Out soon on a wet day. Need to get something before I forget about it.

Yesterday, I finally saw one of the cleaners for the building and asked her to remove the air freshener from my floor. She had on the railing near my door. Bad enough when one of my neighbours put one in the wall socket but add the regular one too it and I had a hard time breathing. It was sooo much better yesterday when I got in. I could breath.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:02 PM

All done for today. Rained on when went out and dry on way back. Picked up a couple of things at the library after taking two things back. One is reboot of a British cop show and the other is 28years later. Both I am curious about. Also a little more cleaning done.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:51 PM