I Hate My Sink - How one company can switch out your kitchen sink

 At Directsinks.com, we love blogs. We seek out knowledge that can help us be more efficient in helping our clients. Sometimes we will go on Houzz to see what advise other professionals are giving out regarding common issues. Today I came across a company that will swap out your sink in a day or two.   This company is Ihatemysink.com and Joe Corlett,LLC. Below you will find the images and content from Joe himself: 

 

This double bowl stainless steel sink was changed to an apron front single bowl stainless.

I arrived at 9:38 a.m., had the sink removed by 9:59, the faucet and air switch gone at 10:08, and the cabinet front tapped off by 10:21.

Before you can begin cutting stone, you have to know the dimensions over which you have no control. On this Kohler K-3943 that’s the distance from the back of the apron which will touch the cabinet front to the rear sink opening which is about 18 ¼”. You need this information to determine if you will have a positive or negative sink reveal and how large that reveal may be. I prefer the smallest possible positive reveal which is having the stone begin right after the curve at the sink flange and I don’t ask for customer opinion. Unlike a negative reveal which hides the flange completely and is much more forgiving, this requires very accurate measuring and cutting to look good. The trade-off is, I don’t have to round the bottom of the stone at the cut-out and there is no crud ledge created.

The pencil is sitting at 1 ¾”, which is the amount the top overhangs the cabinet front. From there, the rear of the sink cut-out measured about 17 5/8” which means I had to remove ¾” to get my 1/8” positive reveal. Of course, you’ve got to center the new sink cut-out in the cabinet perfectly.

With a few business phone call interruptions, I started cutting stone at 11:15. My Festool rail saw only leaves that much dust on the countertop when you start cutting before you realize that you haven’t connected the vacuum hose. I repeated several passes to avoid over straining my saw. When you save the last 1/8” of stone for the last pass, the cuts are nearly dust-free. Remember to always cut the right side first so the front sink rail supports the saw rail. The rough opening, including nibbling the corners with my vacuumed grinder, was completed at 12:10 p.m. If you whack the corner before nibbling enough, you’ll be patching your cut-out, believe me.

When you cut the sides, sparks fly when you cut through the reinforcement rod. Instead of filling his rod slot with epoxy and bedding his rod in it, this fabricator threw his rod in the hole and covered it in knife grade polyester, hence the pictured voids. You’ve got to grind that rod back away from the sink moisture.  I fit a chunk of scrap in the hole and ground and polished it flush. This was done by 12:58.

At 2:13, the cut-out was profiled and polished and I took a short break.

After changing blades in my Festool, the cabinet front was cut to accommodate the sink.

The Hercules Universal Sink Harness is attached to the cabinet sides; however, the altered cabinet front can’t be installed yet because you can’t get the sink in. You can’t put the sink in and tighten the harness without the cabinet front because the cabinet front keeps the cabinet sides from pulling in when the harness is tightened. I put a 4’ level across the cut-out and while clamping the sink in place through the drain hole, put a nice couple of scratches in the bottom of the sink, but got them out before the homeowner saw them. With the sink clamped almost in place but slid forward some, I siliconed the flange, slid the cabinet front up and behind the apron and tapped it back into place then clamped the sink into position and tightened the harness. You should see lots of pretty silicone squeeze-out. I ran a bead of hot melt glue at the back sides of the cabinet front, just like the factory did, then screwed the cabinet front to the adjacent cabinet and dishwasher.  The sink was in and the front was on at 3:49.

I went shopping for plumbing at 4:56 and was back at 5:42, only to discover that while I had checked to see if I had glue, I didn’t check to see if the glue I had was good. Luckily there was a hardware store 10 minutes away. The sink was operational at 6:33 and my butt was in my truck seat at 7:15. 9 hours 37 minutes’ total, excluding drive time which was a half hour each way. I’ve done this job at least 5 times now, so your first may take a bit longer.

 

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When we read through this, we felt we had to share. 

If you are in a similar predicament and are in the Sarasota Florida or Atlanta Georgia area, reach out to Joe at Ihatemysink.com.