Undermounted kitchen sink

[Kristian]

When I remodelled my kitchen recently I wanted to put in an undermounted sink. Having it done by the worktop manufacturer costs a bundle and since I already had bought the worktop I thought I'd take a stab at it myself.

Making the template took the longest time, getting the radius right on the corners and so on, but after that it was mostly routing work.

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Cutting out the hole for the sink.

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Making the rabbet for the undermount.

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Dry fit (and moment of truth).

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Mounted with brackets and sealant/adhesive.

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Worktop oiled and faucet mounted.

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Another view

I have given the walnut worktop 4 coats of oil making sure especially the end grain in the left and right side of the sink has been saturated before taking it into use.

- Kristian

 

[AlexThePalex]

Yep, that's one good looking sink, no doubt about it.

 

[rdesigns]

Very nice work, and undermounted, wipe-in sinks are the way to go, especially in kitchens. Another feature I'd like to see more of is wall-mounted faucets instead of the usual deck-mounted. Commercial kitchens always have the faucets of hardworking sinks mounted on a vertical surface at the back of the sink. This makes cleaning much easier.

Of course, the plumbing for a wall-mount faucet is more difficult, and it is not always practical to go to the length.

I am considering these things lately because I want to replace our kitchen work tops with hard maple (or some other hardwood--any suggestions?), and I will do an undermount similar to what you did.

Thanks for showing your work and methods.

Russel

 

[jmbfestool]

looks nice!

JMB

 

[paulroy]

GREAT job! Nice Design!

 

[fidelfs]

Thanks for the posting,  that is something that I will be doing pretty soon.  This will help a lot.

Fidel

 

[Kristian]

Thanks for the comments!  [smile]

My previous faucet was mounted directly in the worktop which meant that by time the area around the faucet was fairly damaged by water. A wall mounted faucet would be a nice feature and if fitted with a motion sensor it would be even easier to keep water away from the worktop.

But since this new faucet is mounted directly in the sink I hardly find any water outside the sink. For worktops made of wood I can highly recommend this option.

Putting together a quick drawing in SketchUp makes the whole process a lot faster and confident. I found the measurements incl. the radius of the inside corners on the manufacturers web site and drew the sink's surface in SketchUp. Added 4 mm (the first dotted line) to the inside measure of the sink to make it visible in the cut-out and then 8 mm (second dotted line) to get the guide-edge for my router's copying ring ('Ø30 mm copying ring' MINUS '14 mm router bit' DIVIDED BY 2 = 8 mm). In SketchUp I could then read the radius of my templates inside corners to be 22 mm which was pretty lucky 'cause I already had a 44 mm hole saw in a kit bought a few years back.  [smile]

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- Kristian