This old house...

Since we moved into this house, it has been clear that the bathroom has undergone a lot of bad renovation.  On the surface, it looked like a tiny 1950s 'everything pink' bathroom, but the wall cupboards looked more like something done in the 80s or 90s.  Truthfully, it only seemed big enough for half a person.
The changes started when I tried to replace the toilet seat.  It was wooden, really old, and had lost its sealant.  So basically it smelled like urine all the time in there.  The screws holding it to the toilet were some kind of brass or copper and had totally crusted up and once I got Tim in there to try to help me loosen them, the toilet ended up cracked.  Tim's education in plumbing went pretty quickly there for a while.
Once the plumbing skills were confident enough, he replaced the pink sink that had been leaking and had a really tiny spout with a small white pedestal.  It made a lot more room for, like, walking into the bathroom.  We talked about doing some more stuff but nothing changed for a time until we watched an episode of this old house where they were removing wallpaper.  The bathroom had this pink wallpaper/tile/too high chair rail thing going... and I came home to most of the wallpaper removed one day.  And underneath was like a dark tan.
One of the things that has bothered me about the bathroom from the beginning was the medicine cabinet.  It was huge, old, and the shelves were all wonky.  On one side, the mirror wouldn't latch right.  At one point I lost a very full bottle of essential oil because it rolled down into the sink.  I'm pretty sure thats why we have a tiny chip on one corner of the new sink.  Anyways, yesterday I decided that I'd try to level the shelves by rehanging them, but I quickly discovered they wouldn't come out because they were additionally attached by something coming through the back.
Now, the reason we'd never tried to replace this before was because, first, we hadn't felt like spending much money and, second, there was a strip of vanity lights going across the top.  Ever since I got Tim Wiring Simplified: Based on the 2008 National Electrical Code for Xmas last year, he had learned an awful lot about wiring (whether he actually learned it from the book, I don't know) and had even put in a bunch of stuff in the basement.  This was the moment which decided that the medicine cabinet would finally come down.  We discovered that the only things that attached it to the wall were 4 giant flathead screws, 1 drywall-ish screw, and a thick layer of caulk or something where it attached to the tiles around it.  The latter was bearing most of the weight and doing the best job of holding it up.  It was good we weren't too attached to the tiles because it ripped a bunch off with it.
As you could have guessed with an old bathroom, there was totally a hole in the wall behind this medicine cabinet for a recessed medicine cabinet, but there was a problem... the size of the hole was 20"w x 16" h.  Most modern recessed medicine cabinets completely flip that dimension.  They are taller rather than wider.  There was some talk of getting one and then moving the hinges but then the shelves are the wrong way and stuff, so we decided to build one.  Also, we installed a new cute little light where the electric came through.  We also replaced the overhead light in the bathroom with basically the same fixture (but newer) because it was always losing its connection with the lightbulbs, but it turns out that even the new ones do that so we basically just made it look slightly better.
I just thought I'd blog this so that I can post some pictures later of the finished product (hopefully soon).