The new medicine cabinet for the bathroom is beautiful: dark cherry finish, beaded trim around the oval-topped mirror, a garnish of carving above the door and heavy cornice both top and bottom. Very attractive bit of woodworking that Randa found online and that we picked up in Kansas City about three months ago.

We installed it, finally, last week. At first, we used the built-in mounts on the back but found they didn’t allow the unit to fit completely flat against the wall. After removing it and ripping out the mounts, we tried again, using expanding wall anchors with fasteners inserted through the back of the cabinet. That held it flat enough but with the thick trim, the unit protruded nearly eight inches from the wall, enough to interfere physically with use of the sink. That was on top of the “visual interference.” I.e., it just didn’t look right.

So, being the self-deluded glutton for creating work for myself that I am, I assured Randa that it wouldn’t be too big a job to carefully cut away some of the trim and mount the unit so that it was at least partially inside the wall. It took a mere ten hours to reach our current stage of preparation: removing two switches, cutting out three sections of drywall, cutting through three two-by-fours, removing a wall-mounted light base, re-routing the wiring, replacing the light base and relocating the wall box for the switches, adding mounting strips to which I could fasten the replacement drywall. Follow that up with taping the new drywall joints and three coats of finishing compound. Now, we’re ready for sanding, priming, base coat and the three-color faux technique. In other words, just a few more hours and we’ll be ready to re-install our medicine cabinet.

So, yes, it’s been a bit of an aggravation but improvements often are. The quickest and easiest way is sometimes sufficient, adequate and appropriate. But when we consider how long we might have to live with things a certain way, we should become more willing to do what it takes to make them better. A short-term aggravation can lead to a long-term improvement.

H. Arnett
9-21-09