Here’s a do-it-yourself job for the bathroom that may appear harder than it actually is: Replacing or adding a medicine cabinet.
The mirrored bathroom cabinet is a bathroom multitasker. functioning as a storage space, hiding place, and beauty and grooming station. It’s a handy accessory, but you don’t have to be a handyman or handywoman to install one.
You can buy one at a home improvement store for about $100, or go to a specialty store and get a high-end cabinet for more than $1,000.
“It’s one of those projects that you say is going to take you all day, and you do it in an hour,” said Karen Collins, marketing communications manager for Broan-NuTone LLC.
Medicine cabinets can be affixed to the wall or be recessed a few inches inside the wall. Recessed cabinets allow for better ease of movement around the vanity because they don’t stick out as much as those hung on the wall.
Medicine cabinets are generally about 3 1/2 inches deep.
“When you bend over to brush your teeth or wash your face, you could whack your head on it” if it protrudes too far, said bath design expert Abbey Schaefer.
Replacing an existing medicine cabinet involves less work than installing a new one, to be sure. For replacement jobs, homeowners should make sure that their new cabinet matches the length and width of the rough opening of the old one. The old cabinet usually can be easily removed by simply removing screws that held it in place and pulling it out.
Find a friend or relative to help you, because someone will have to hold the cabinet steady while the other person screws it into the wall.
Mirrored doors can open either to the left or to the right. When you buy a new medicine cabinet, make sure you know which way it swings open to avoid walls and ensure full range of movement.
When installing a new recessed cabinet, the most important step is to make sure there is no plumbing or electrical wires in the wall before you make the hole. If there is plumbing, you will not be able to work in that space unless you move the pipes, which is costly.
“If you don’t know what’s behind the wall, make a little hole and check in there to see if you are hitting anything,” Collins said.
Recessed cabinets are mounted on wall studs, and many of them have mounting screws installed through the inside of the cabinet.
Wall-hung cabinets can easily be screwed into the 2-by-4s inside the wall, allowing for stability. Drywall alone will not hold a wall-hung medicine cabinet.
When choosing a cabinet, find one whose frame goes well with the colors of the bathroom. Also decide if you want glass shelves or metal ones. Broan-NuTone even offers a locking medicine cabinet, at a cost of about $218.
Another cabinet manufacturer, Robern, has a cabinet with cold storage for beauty creams, beverages and wellness products, like aloe for sunburn.
Schaefer says if a do-it-yourself project such as installing a medicine cabinet makes you shake in your shower shoes, don’t be scared to ask an expert.
“Good retailers are always more than willing to help people think through what they’re doing before they attempt to do it themselves,” she said.
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