So ya wanna recess a Medicine Cabinet

Our home was built in 1983 with no medicine cabinets. Until ~2 years ago, we had drugs and medicines stored all over in no particular order in drawers and cabinets in our bath, the guest bath, the powder room, and the kitchen. These represented a threat to visiting grandchildren. Thus, the initial installation of medicine cabinets occurred. I bought four Keystone ASB-1526 (discontinued, this is current similar model), two for our bath and two for the guest bath, and kept an eye out for an antique cabinet for the power room, haven't yet found one. I recessed two in our bath and one in the guest bath sans problems but the fourth was not so easy. On the wall opposing the shower in tub/toilet room, the shower pipe encroached in the recess. I abandoned recessing it and mounted the unit flush on the wall. The medcab came with "decorative" mirrors to install on its exposed sides when mounted flush and I did that.

In November, Jeanne fired up a project to remove the awful wallpaper and paint the guest bath. Dissatisfied with the mirrors on the flush mounted medcab, she asked if I could remove them. Rerouting the pipe in wall so the unit could be recessed was a pending challenge that I accepted.

Not thinking about project documentation when I started, I didn't capture a proper "before" picture, this was taken after work was underway. Here you see the shower pipe encroaching in the recess, also the electrical wiring that encroaches UR corner. I've cut and removed the section of the stud that intruded.

Also, at the top, was a horizontal 2x4 on the near side that supported the shower head fitting, right where the wiring shows, I've removed that. The shower head fitting is too low, encroaches in the recess, so will be moved 3" higher.

Unseen is a 2nd horizontal 2x4 higher up with a hole the wiring passes through, restricting moving the wiring out of the way. Not much access to that 2x4 but I had to remove it and cut to the hole to free the wiring so it will curve out of the way.

To cut the feed pipe in the restricted 3.5" space within the wall, I bought a mini tube cutter #24475 which made cutting the 1/2" pipe in the space possible.

Looking into the LR corner of the recess, the feed pipe enters the opening at the bottom, is cut below the recess, elbow to the R, short pipe, elbow up, long pipe up the R side. Damn leadless solder! Solder didn't flow into one of those elbows and I feared that it would leak. Disassembled it and soldered it with lead solder, after all, it's only a shower feed, no one's gonna drink water from it. Short 2x4 pieces are Liquid Nailed in spots at sides where the medcab screws to them, the one shown here and in the next pic are relieved around the new pipe location.


Looking into the UR corner of the recess, feed pipe up R side, elbow L, short pipe, shower head fitting higher. Also shown are the "worms" that extrude through the wet plaster mesh. I had to chisel these off the mesh until they were relieved sufficiently to allow the medcab to seat into the recess. This took ~2 hours of hammer and chisel work. Unshown are two 2X4 stubs Liquid Nailed on the L side of the recess.

Here's the final result, the medcab installed in its recess. I can't explain the gold color of the pic, something due to a flawed camera color setting, and it doesn't show the mirror well because it's reflecting the newly painted back wall.