Today I decided to work on the built-in medicine cabinet. I’ve known for a long time how I wanted it to look, but it hadn’t gone anywhere beyond that. We were planning on putting beadboard in the back of it, however I didn’t have enough of it today (and Home Depot/Lowes were actually closed for once!). So, I decided to try another idea that I had a while back as an alternative: tile the back wall of the cabinet. We had some leftover 2″x2″ tiles from the floor and shower, so we proceeded to tile a 20″x24″ piece of MDF that would fit into the back of the cabinet and serve as the back wall.
Here’s what the medicine cabinet looked like when we moved in (just for kicks):
and here’s what it looked like this morning:
This is when we were getting started. Danielle was cutting apart all the little tiles and I was putting them onto the MDF:
Here it is almost finished:
And finished:
One problem that I hadn’t anticipated (though I should have) was that the moisture would cause the MDF to bow out in the middle. I wasn’t planning on doing anything to attach it, I was just going to put it into the back of the cabinet rough-in and the build the frame of the cabinet in front of it. Since it bowed, however, I had to come up with an alternative. I ended up pulling a few random tiles off before the mastic had dried and nailing the MDF to the wall. This solved the bowing problem and fixed it in place, too. Unfortunately the small nails from the nail gun went through the wall into the closet behind, but I can trim those off later.
This is what it looks like with the frame in place:
I still have to build the door (with mirror) for it, as well as drill the holes in the two side pieces for adjustable shelves, then do the outside trim. So far, though, we love how it looks! Much nicer (and more exciting) than beadboard!