Replace Cornerstone Integral Sink With Retro Fit Stainless Steel Undermount Sink in Mint Hill, NC

This is a Cornerstone integral solid surface sink that is severely cracked.  The homeowner wants to replace it with a stainless steel undermount sink.

Unlike some of the double or single bowl solid surface sinks, there are no undermount stainless steel sinks that will fit the sink hole cutout so we will have to do some extensive alterations to allow the new stainless steel sink to be installed.

You can see here that I have had to cut into two of the radius corners.  I have to add more solid surface material (Cornerstone) to the cut areas so that I can extend the material far enough to reform the radius to fit the new stainless steel sink.  Notice the spider webb crack in the left bowl.
I already have the sink cut free from the countertop at this point but I still have it sitting in the cabinet.

Here is the final product.  As you can see, it looks like it was an original installation.  This one will require a local plumber to get the water running again.  The customer was thrilled with the result.

Cornerstone Integral Sink Replaced With Retrofit Stainless Steel Undermount Sink in Mint Hill NC done by Bryan Dix, 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!