Hey friends,

Let's address the niggles I had from the electrics from last week's email. Many of you pointed out that the dimmer switch is configurable and I should be able to resolve the dimming/extractor fan problems. Thank you! I was embarrassingly unaware of this functionality.

As for the buzzing cabinet, well that's a whole story:

🐝 Oh, Buzz Off

The new mirror cabinet arrived quickly. I had hoped it could be an easy swap of the offending component but there's been a design change. The 'old' cabinet had a removable casing for the electrics:

The new one's casing cannot be removed:

So I had to remove the old cabinet by taking off the tile backer I'd already fixed in place and replaced with the new cabinet:

I wired it up and...

BUZZZZZZZZZ

🤬

I reckon I know what the supplier has done. They think the problem was with the casing vibrating so they made it totally fixed. But now I can't even access the electrics to try to remedy it, or if something else goes wrong in the future I can't replace anything.

Off with the new and on with the old cabinet. By taking the doors off I could lower the casing enough to detach the offending transformer from the top of the cabinet:

The buzz stopped. Okay we're getting somewhere but I can't leave it hanging - I need something to dampen the vibrations. Gotta MacGyver this situation.

When I made my soundproofing a party wall video, the original equipment manufacturer from overseas (not the supplier) sent me a bunch of other soundproofing bits to look at. One of these is a metal C-channel stud with foam backing.

The foam might work. I didn't want to use screws again as that would bridge the foam decoupling so I used mitre bond to stick the foam to the transformer and then to the cabinet.

Hey presto, no buzz!

I reckon if I had kept some of my EPDM offcuts, that would have worked too. So this only took my entire Saturday afternoon and about 10 trips to and from the consumer unit. My only concern is that perhaps it's supposed to be directly attached for heat dissipation, but it's probably fine. I may still look at an air-switch of some kind down the line.

----

The cabinet has two plastic fillers at the top and bottom. These don't light up despite what the picture looks like, which I knew when I bought it. As I'm embedding into the wall I didn't want the top to light up.

I do want to have my LED strip at the bottom though which matches the other niches' LEDs so I managed to get the filler out and use the gap to stick my LED strip in.

After the buzz debacle, this was pretty satisfying. I don't know why they're there but I used it to my advantage. For the niches I'll be using a tile trim which hopefully will have a closely equivalent translucency.

I know at least one reader is planning on buying this cabinet. For the price it's pretty great to have LEDs on a sensor, de-misting mirror doors and a shaver point all in an aluminium frame but it's got its issues. I'd definitely want one where the electrics are accessible.

🥳 Plumbing Complete

Hurrah!

The first job was to cut the hole for the toilet's waste pipe. My plumber had asked me to remove the concealed cistern in advance to make it easier to cut the hole. Having taken so long to get it just right I decided against this as, with my experience from core-drilling the extractor fan hole, I reckoned there was enough room to get my SDS drill in. So I offered to do it myself. He drilled the hole at the correct angle (too gentle - things get stuck; too steep - liquids flow but solids get stuck) and I did the grunt work.

Next he rigged up all the pipework from the shower valve. I had to make some adjustments afterwards to bring it out a bit further and make it plumb which is tricky with brick. I wonder whether it might have been smarter locating it in the stud wall between the mirror/sink and bath.

Here it is with the 20mm marmox board on top. The 4 black brackets on the wall are for the rim of the bath to sit on.

I ran a thick bead of silicone on each of them and all along the wall, peeled back the bath's protective plastic and lifted the bath on to them.

That's a nice looking bubble!

Here are the outlets for the hand and overhead shower. It's critical that after tile backer and tiling that the outlets don't protrude from the wall. So either flush or a little inset. The plumber had picked up a piece of 20mm tile backer to work off of rather than the 10mm I'm using on this wall so I had to re-do these slightly to get them further back.

There's also the issue of what width tile will be used and depth of adhesive. I imagine this can be problematic if different trades are coming in without someone overseeing the entirety of the project.

Anyway, once all that was sorted I could finish off the acoustic insulation and tile backer on this wall:

Still a way to go but decent progress.

👋 Bye Shed

Outside, in the sunshine, the shed came down very easily and definitely opens up the garden.

Including the greenhouse, it's probably not far off a half-plot allotment so I look forward to getting into food growing properly next year. I'm big into berries and the far end has a gooseberry bush, raspberries and blackberries. I think I'll keep the first two but the blackberries are of the wild variety - thorny and a bit small - so I'll dig them up after they've fruited and replace with a cultivar.

As for the asbestos sheets, we tied them to the top of Joe's car and took them to the dump. The cost was a very reasonable £13.20.

My next job on this protracted project is to sort out some water butts for the garage's gutter to run into.

Phew, what a week!

👋

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

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