Retro Fab Corian Countertop, Re Use Corian Countertop, Winston Salem, NC

I refer to these types of jobs as a retrofit or a retro fab. Some folks refer to it as recycling Corian. What ever you call it, here it is.

These countertops came out of a house in Winston Salem, NC. They took them out so they could have new granite installed. Obviously they realized that their Corian countertops were still full of life and they decided to donate the tops to their aunt who lived on the other side of town.


Of course, as with any Corian recycling, the countertops need to be reworked in order to fit into the new space. The sink has to be moved, some edges cut off, some edges added, and then of course it needs a complete refinish to bring it back up to brand new. After all, even though these tops are pre owned, we want them to look just as good as the day they first rolled out of the fab shop. Here is the kitchen with it's existing old laminate countertops. On a side note, usually laminate countertops are not that hard to tear out. These were fabricated on site about 35 years ago and hidden nails and screws and lots of liquid nail. Getting these out was about the biggest challenge in this kitchen.

Here is the kitchen before.





Here is the finished kitchen. The aunt loved it and was very thankful to her sister for the new upgrade to her condo kitchen.





Retro Fab, Recycle, Re Use Corian Countertop, Winston Salem, NC. Done By Complete Solid Surface Refinishing In Beautiful North Carolina!

Corian Countertop Retro Fab. Oak Ridge, NC

This is a Corian countertop retro fabrication job. That simply means that someone wants to make some major changes to their kitchen but they want to re use their Corian countertops that are currently installed. While some retro projects are a little costly, they can still save a homeowner hundreds or in some cases even thousands of dollars on the cost of brand new countertops.

The picture below shows the existing tile island and the main peninsula countertop that is made from Corian. The homeowners want do away with the Corian peninsula and just continue the countertop straight along the wall.



In this next pic below, you can see that I have taken the peninsula portion of the countertop off of the existing cabinets and I have cut the remainder of the countertop to accept the new field seam that is required to extend the countertop after the cabinet guys take out the existing cabinets and rework the layout along the wall.



Notice the cast iron drop in sink. They also want to change that to an undermount stainless steel sink. That is an upgrade that I have been doing quite a bit of lately. By the way, that is also called a retrofit sink replacement.




Below is the series of finished pictures. Things to look for, the new granite island replaces the old tile island, the Corian countertop is now all finished in a straight run, and they now have a stainless steel undermount sink instead of their old cast iron drop in sink.










I was in full on countertop repair mode and did not do enough justice in this blog post to the great cabinet work that was done on the island, not to mention the gorgeous granite countertop. That work was done by Cabinet Studio in Winston Salem, NC.

Corian Countertop Retro Fab. Oak Ridge, NC. Done by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing in Beautiful Clemmons, North Carolina!

Retrofit Hi Macs Sink Replacement. Durham, North Carolina

This is a Hi Macs sink that was somehow damaged. Can you tell. I am curious as to how this got to be so severely damaged but nobody offered any explanation and I didn't pry. It definitely needs to be replaced though. And since they didn't want to have the issue again, they decided to go with a retro fit stainless steel sink as a replacement.




Well here it is. After a few hours of getting the Hi Macs sink out of there and then re cutting the sink cutout to fit the retrofitted stainless steel sink, now it is finished.

The only thing left now is to do the plumbing and since this is a retro fit sink replacement and the drain lines will have to be altered, I had the homowner to use their favorite plumber to do the plumbing re work. He will be in in the morning and everything will be back to normal.

Retrofit Hi Macs Sink Replacement. Durham, North Carolina. Done by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing in Beautiful North Carolina!

Granite Composite Sink Replacement in Granite Countertop.

This granite composite sink replacement is in Asheville, NC. I love it when I have work to do up in the mountains. As you can see, this granite composite sink has cracked. The homeowner is not sure what caused it to crack but he knows he needs a new one.



Here is a look at the entire sink.



Here is where the sink used to be. I had a heck of a time trying to get this sink free from the granite countertop without cracking the granite. I have seen some fabricators go overboard with some undermount sink installations and
this was one time when they did.




I ended up having to break one side of the sink into pieces with a hammer just to get it free from the counterop. I thought it would be better to break the sink into pieces if it kept me from cracking the granite countertop.





After a whole lot of work and a trip to 2 different hardware stores, it is finally back together. Here is the new granite composit sink.





Granite Composite Sink Replacement in Asheville North Carolina done by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing! Serving all of North Carolina.

Gibraltar Countertop Repair. Summerfield North Carolina

This countertop repair is Wilsonart Gibraltar. They have a gas cooktop with severe cracks coming from the cooktop cutout.





The gas cooktop has to be removed in order to repair the cracks in the cooktop cutout.


Viola! After about 6 hours the cooktop cutout cracks are no longer there and it's time to put the house on the market.



Gibraltar Countertop Repair in Summerfield North Carolina by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing!

Retrofit Sink Replacement. Baden Lake North Carolina

Okay. Here is part two of Retrofit Sink Replacement. Baden Lake North Carolina.Unfortunately, some of my pictures were so bad it wasn't worth posting all of them. Anyway, here is a shorter version of events than I had originally hoped to post. I have the old sink out of there now. And I have cut the new sink opening to the proper size. There was not enough room in the cabinets to allow the new sink to go in. I had to cut out the cabinet walls to make room for manipulating the sink into position. Also, the new sink is so large that it extends beyond the walls of the cabinets. And that's it. After I got old sink out and re sized the sink cutout and cut away the cabinet walls, then I had to clamp the sink into position and attach the permanent sink holding system to finish the sink installation. Then of course I had to repair the cabinet walls so it did not look like we did what we did under there. The whole project was a day and a half. I expected to have it done in a day but the cabinet work added a few extra hours to the job. It turned out great though. I wish my pics were better. Retro fit sink replacement by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing in Beautiful North Carolina!

Retrofit Sink Replacement. Baden Lake, NC

Here is a cracked solid surface sink. The homeowner did not want to replace it with another solid surface sink and wanted to go with a stainless steel sink instead. As you can probably guess, changing to an entirely different type of sink does present some unique challenges. Once you cut out the solid surface sink, the hole that is left is certainly not going to be the same dimension or even have the same contour in the corners for that matter. In many instances we have to "shrink" the sink cutout and then recut the hole to fit the new sink. As always, there is no room for error because the whole point of having me to replace the sink is for it to not look like it was an after thought, even though it is a retro fit. It must look like it was there originally. Fortunately in this instance, we are not going to have to shrink the sink cutout, we are going to enlarge it. Uh oh, did I say this was fortunate? Well, from the standpoint of having to alter the countertop, it is fortunate. However, that also opens us up to an entirely different set of unique challenges. In this instance, the new sink (the only model that was large enough to fit the space from front to back) was quite a bit larger than the old, cracked solid surface sink. For this one, we have to make room where there isn't any room under the cabinet. Enough talk, here are some pics for you. 

                                   This is the cracked sink before I rip into it. Here are a couple of pictures after I have completed the sink replacement. This is going to be a lengthy post. To see how I got from where I started with the solid surface sink to where I ended up with the stainless steel sink,  click here for part 2. Retro fit sink replacement by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing in Beautiful North Carolina!

Cornerstone Countertop Repair. Greensboro NC Part 2

Well, here are some pics that will clearly show the cracks in this Cornerstone countertop. The "invisible" cracks show quite clearly when you scratch the countertop with sandpaper and get the dust smeared into and around the cracked area. The following two pictures show the same corner with 2 cracks coming from it. This is the left corner of the kitchen.




The picture below show the right side of the kitchen with another big, mean Crock Pot caused crack.




As always, here are the finished pictures. Naturally, you can no longer see the cracks in the countertop because they are no longer cracked.




Another great repair done by Complete Solid Surface Refinishing in beautiful North Carolina.

Part 1 of this article can be found here. http://cssrblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/cornerstone-countertop-repair.html