In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, September 11, 2026 15:15
VIEWED: 338648
PAGE 752 of 834
Nice. The festivities haven't even kicked off for the night yet and the city sewer is not working and the water is halfway up to my maple tree. No hard rain. Just steady rain all day long. Now the thunderstorms are about to start coming in...
Hope the power stays on, or I'm in for a rough night.
Finding it hard to sit still anyhow. Now that my computer project is done, it's hard for me to sit in place and "do nothing".
So I've already been doing some figuring for my medicine cabinet. Looks like just about 12" above the sink basin is probably going to be the best height for it. The back of the 3 glass shades only protrude 3.5" from the wall, while the cabinet itself is 5" from the wall (Only on the very top and very bottom where it protrudes further than the rest of the cabinet. The rest of the cabinet is 4" from the wall, but this is important because of the lamp).
I wasn't going to go this high in the first place since it was obviously at least 3" higher from where the old cabinet was centered, but the dimensions from the floor for standard desired "eye level" had it quite a bit higher. I don't recall the exact number for eye level off the top of my head, but centering my cabinet on it left me just shy of 13" above the basin, which is too close to the glass shades since they don't stick out further, IMO and I really need to go at least 1/2" lower to be able to affix my cabinet to the very top stud of their old frame out, otherwise I have to go out to the garage and cut another one to put on top of the existing one and out as far as the rest of the drywall so the screws weren't just floating in between the cabinet and the new stud.
I found out really quick that I'd better do ALL of the electric for that switch before I put the cabinet in there. I knew I'd have to have the exact height so I knew where to screw the base of the plastic junction box on the side of the cabinet, but I didn't realize just how hard it would be to do an electric box with a switch facing the wall only about 1.5" to 2.0" from the wall. Probably not an impossible task, but one that I'm grateful I just avoided.
So now I've put the entire box together, switch faceplate and all, and wired all my electric back up after I drilled 2 more holes to the side of the existing one so it would just barely clear where I needed it to without anybody ever being able to see that hole from any angle.
And I know the exact length I need for that flex, so I gave myself one additional "loop" of the flex that I can force back in if I need to, but otherwise, the flex conduit has now been attached firmly to studs within 12" of the box as per code.
All I should have to do now is screw the box into the side of the cabinet at the exact necessary height, zip 4 screws through the cab into the massive amount of 2x4's they left me above and below that opening, and snap the box into place and I should be good.
I don't think I'm even going to paint that switch box. It came in a nice color that matches my white trim already, and the front of the cabinet has about a 1.2" lip over the side, so half of that is going to be hidden anyhow. If I decide to paint it after it's all up, no biggie. I'm a big boy and I can cut in without making a mess of everything.
I find this preferable to waiting on a few coats of paint and not being able to get this done tonight anyhow. If I can get that cab up on the wall, my electric is all done in the bathroom except for adding total GFCI protection for the room, and the door and both shelves for that cab are finished so I can have all that put up too.
Although I might put contact paper on the shelves before anything goes back in there for keeps.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. I think it would be a great idea for you. I'm sure they have online things where you can teach yourself, but you might be like me and not give it the attention it deserves if you're teaching yourself on your own time frame without the rigid structure of a class setting. I'm really good at teaching myself things I'm interested in learning, but if I don't have any real interest in it, it's probably not going to be something I learn on my own.
In the meantime, you should plug your drive into your computer. Open up File Explorer. Look on the left "pane" (It's why they call it Windows, afterall...).
You should see something that says "This PC" in that left pane.
Underneath this, it would list out all of your currently attached drives.
You will definately have (C:). If you have a CD/DVD player attached, that would be (D:).
I'd like you to do this and tell me that you see these and you know what I'm talking about.
Do you have a CD/DVD drive?
I'd also like to know that because then we'll know if the thumbstick would be (D:) or (E:). It's almost certainly one of the two.
(Sometimes I've gone up to the letters I, J, K, and even L before. But I've got a LOT of drives and network storage that uses up a lot more letters than you're ever likely to use).
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
Yeah, I need visual as well as just written instructions. Like I said my local college should have something. Even if it costs a bit. It will be worth it in the long run.
I will try that again and hopefully it works when I do it.
It does have a DVD drive on it and possible CD.
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Stay safe from the weather SIX.
Where I am we get all the news on the big storms down there.
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All done for today. Even got stray changed cleared off the kitchen table.
Fresh peas for supper tonight. Delish.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Yeah, I need visual as well as just written instructions. Like I said my local college should have something. Even if it costs a bit. It will be worth it in the long run.
I will try that again and hopefully it works when I do it.
Let me know how it goes.
Quote:
It does have a DVD drive on it and possible CD.
Do you mean it might have two separate CD/DVD drives? Or that the thing is a DVD & CD player?
If it plays and burns DVDs, it will play and burn CDs as well.
But if you have two separate optical drives, they will be (D:) and (E:), and you'd be looking for (F:) for your thumb drive.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Finished installing the medicine cabinet. All that's left to do now is get it all GFCI protected and we're all wrapped up and up to code.
I got lucky and the stuff that I thought was paint on the finished wood panel backer that the mirror was glued to was actually just toothpaste and came right off with water, so that's clean. I think that single panel looks good in there when you open the cabinet.
Now I can think about getting contact paper up and I'll finally have my bathroom back...
... until I tear up the floor.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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I think that the previous owners were seriously heavy indoor smokers...
Just got a look at that original outlet that I'll be swapping out for a GFCI, and it is not Ivory like I assumed it was. It was white at one point.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Flood water has all been gone for a while now, so my neighbor wasn't joking when he said he'd ridden his bike down to where the pumps were and saw them all moving. I'm going to be finding out what's happening now. It's only happened 3 times in nearly 15 years up until this week. Twice in one week without any crazy, prolonged amounts of rain compared to what I've already lived through only 6 years ago is completely unacceptable.
Anyway...
This is what's making me smile today despite a little water in my basement.
This, obviously, is the inside of the medicine cabinet, which I mentioned I didn't paint because I didn't want to mess with the mirror that had actually been glued to the other side of it. I put it back in the frame as it was after cleaning it up and I think it looks quite nice. Almost a homage to the wood the way that it used to be for another family, at another time, who lived in an entirely different home.
If I do change one thing about what you're seeing, it will be the back of the door handle. I really think I need to take that down and spray the head of the bolt and the washer with my oil rubbed bronze. It's quite busy back there now with that wood panel and the screws, but I think that will look 100% better just by getting the chrome out of the equation.
What do you think???
Here I could have just put my rubber pads on like I do everything else, but I like those old metallic "clicker" door catches. It gives just the smallest amount of resistance so baby couldn't open it if Mama got too close while holding her, and it just gives a satisfying, nostalgic noise when closing or opening the door.
And you can see just a hint of my 2nd switch off to the right side.
Man... I'm really happy with how all this turned out...
And my 2nd switch...
She's absolutely gorgeous and better than I ever thought she would be. I have no intention on even painting it unless I get enough people telling me that I should. I won't solicit that from anyone who comes to my house, although since I'm talking about it here feel free to tell me I'm wrong.
Hmmmm...
Don't know what happened at the bottom of that pic. Sorry about that. It happened to about 80% of the bottom of another shot of the inside of the cabinet that would have been in between the first two as well. I'll have to see if that was the camera going bad or the thumb drive.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Sometimes it takes me a while, but I eventually get there...
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack (June 6th):
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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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Project isn't done yet, but now I'm finally whole again. 
5 or 6 years ago, back when I was doing the kitchen, I would have probably spent 3 hours doing that contact paper and every single square millimeter of it would have been cut and applied perfectly.
I ain't got time for that shit anymore.
Took me maybe 10 minutes if I'm being generous.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
.... although....
I do have to say that except for just the corners of a few of the glass window slats in my dirty ass, non-temperature-controlled garage windows, not a single piece of window privacy film or contact paper on any surface has had a single peel after 4 or 5 or maybe even 6 years now.
Prep-work is still extremely important.
Oh damn...
Not whole again just yet.
I forgot I still have to put a final coat on the decorative shelf / towel rack along with a few coats on the primered side of that shelf for the toilet cabinet I totally forgot about. I don't care about that shelf at all outside of finishing the job, but I'm not whole again in the bathroom until I have a good towel rack up there for my hand towels.
Come hell or high water (... possibly, literally...) I will finish painting them tomorrow.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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