A good portion of my customers that have me to replace a perfectly working sink are wanting to go from a drop in sink to an Undermount Sink.
In most cases the reason is because they just don't like having the sink sitting up above the surface of the countertop. For some people, they don't care whether they have a sink that sticks up or not. Other people just can't handle it so they bite the bullet and call me to change it out.
These customers had a really nice stainless steel drop in sink but they wanted to go to an undermount stainless steel sink
They knew, because I had prepared them ahead of time, that this was no easy job and that there were a lot of variables to doing a switch from a drop sink in to an undermount sink. In almost every case when you go from a drop in sink to an undermount sink you will have to shrink the hole when you remove the drop in sink to accomodate the curves and overall size of the new undermount sink.
That means that you will have to add material to all four sides of the sink cutout making the hole go from approximately 32"x21" to 26"x15". Once you shrink the hole, then you have to cut the hole to the correct dimensions and with the correct radius in the corners. It is time consuming, dirty, and expensive. For me though, it is also very rewarding to tackle a job like that.
It's the kind of job not just any countertop company will even take on if asked, but the kind of job that I absolutely love to do. It's what makes my inner craftsman giggle.
Enough yapping. Here is a series of pictures from the job process. Not every single step is shown. I was too busy working to stand around taking pictures(:!
This is their perfectly fine stainless that they just stopped liking. (:
After removing the drop in sink, this is the cutout that you have to work with.
This is the hole after I had already done the shrinking process. Notice the squared off inside corners. Most of the time I would have just filled in the entire cutout but I was very limited on material. I needed to shrink the hole 4" smaller in all directions but all I had to use was strips of 3" splash. For this reason, I had to shrink it in two stages. The first stage, I shrunk the cutout by 3", and in the second stage I filled in the corners to provide enough matereal to follow the contour of the undermount sink.
The pencil marks are where I am going to cut the new cutout.
Here is the new cutout for the undermount sink. It's really good to get to this point on this job. But now the real work starts. Shrinking the hole and adjusting the new cutout is pretty tough and time consuming but now it's time to attach the new sink.
When you are fabricating a countertop from scratch, attaching an undermount sink is fairly simple. You have the countertop flipped upside down, lay the sink into place, silicone, and ad the holding clips.
When you do this as a retro fit it is many times harder to accomplish. You are fighting gravity through the entire process. In most cases, and in this case, you can't get all of the clips on it because of the work area under the sink. There just isn't much room to work.
In order to hold the sink in place permanently I had to build a support structure. Being the airhead that I am, or maybe it was the 10 hours of work with no lunch break, I forgot to take a picture of the structure for you to see. Anyway, if you subscribe to the blog on the form on the right of the page, you can get instant email messages when I have new posts. I am certain that I will be doing another one of these jobs.
Here is the finished product. Nevermind the dusty upper bar.
If you live in North Carolina and need countertop repair then stop by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing and contact me or send me an email to blogreply@bryand.ws
NATIONWIDE SOLID SURFACE and STONE COUNTERTOP REPAIR
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