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Originally Posted by rhood
We want to install a wider medicine cabinet. Our current one is recessed between the studs. I am guessing that the studs are metal and I would have to cut one to make a wider hole for the new cabinet. Has anyone done that? Thanks
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I faced this when rebuilding the bathroom of my home in Pennsylvania. The medicine cabinet was on a non-load-bearing wall about ten feet high, leaving about 18” above the proposed changes. Furthermore, the wall behind this was not drywall, but 3/4” planks, tongue and groove, nailed to the studs and the top plate and bottom plate. There were no wires to deal with that weren’t easy to change.
I wanted to install a six foot length of cherry kitchen cabinets, three feet high and a foot deep! (One 48” x 36” unit with 24” doors and one 24” x 36” unit with 12” doors.) Imagine all that space! In this special case, I was able to cut out the studs because the wall behind was strong enough to handle the minor weight (it wasn’t cut). I installed a horizontal 2x4 above where the cabinets would go and screwed the horizontal tongue-and-groove boards to it. I put in another horizontal 2x4 below and attached it the same way. Then I slid the cabinets into the opening 4” and leveled them, screwed them together, and screwed them into the studs and header. This is much sturdier than the way we install cabinets in kitchens. The result sticks out from the wall eight inches, making it much easier to see myself in the mirror without having to bend over the countertop. I’ve attached a photo, taken from my extra-long bathtub while taking a bath.
As for your case, we need more information. My house at The Villages has one bathroom where the mirror above the sink is on a load-bearing exterior wall. While it may be possible to replace some studs with a horizontal header and a plate below the new cabinet, that means your new cabinet is pressing against an outside wall (Is it Styrofoam? Plywood? Oriented strand board?) If your load-bearing wall is concrete block, then the studs inside it to which the drywall is screwed are not load-bearing, and they can be cut and held with a small horizontal header. However, that means no insulation on that outside wall.
If you have an inside wall, the insulation is not a factor. I don’t know if any of the interior walls in The Villages are load-bearing. The roof trusses may just bear on the outside walls. Even if they are load-bearing, studs can be cut, so long as you install properly-sized horizontal headers. This is just like putting in a window or a doorway. Your cabinet would then press against the drywall on the back side of the wall. This is not all that hard for a carpenter to do. You could then install flush-mounted cabinets or some that stick out, like mine. They would need studs or something similar on each side to which to screw the cabinets. Another possibility would be to screw 3/4” plywood to the wall on the other side, whether on top of the drywall or after removing it (then replacing it with more drywall). Studs screwed to plywood are much sturdier than studs screwed to drywall.
My belief is that all bathrooms should have very large medicine cabinets and extra-quiet Panasonic exhaust fans that suck 100 cubic feet per minute. I don’t ever want humid bathrooms.