I'm Sinking, I'm Sinking!

You know I feel bad about that title but then a part of me doesn't feel bad. Bad puns are rich part of our family history and I shouldn't feel bad about maintaining a tradition. 

So, as you might have guessed this is a post about ovens. No, kidding, it's about sinks. You knew that right? Well, actually it's about kitchens and the things we do to make them happen. Like calling in any and all favors because you want desperately, more than anything, to live in your very first house that you've spent over a year working on. Judiaann said that we could finally move in when we had a working bathroom (check!) and kitchen counters and sink (check please).

So I called in my friend Ben, who happens to be our architect but is also a former cabinet maker, to help kick my ass in gear and get the basic boxes for the kitchen together. 

So we're using prefinished maple for the box construction. It won't be seen unless you open the drawers, which will be baltic birch (see previous post) so it made sense to speed the process by going with pre fin. 

This is the "coffee station" which is also the prep area and will have a second sink. Since the original kitchen was the traditional small space we are working to gain as much as we can within the footprint. By opening the wall to the main room we give the kitchen a much larger feel and by building a pantry into the laundry room and adding this second sink and prep area we're almost getting a kitchen and a half. 

This is the cabinet next to the stove and I'm using a laser to set the counters to the same height throughout the kitchen. The floor may not always be perfectly level but the cabinets will be. 

Another thing that has been confounding me is wanting the back side of the peninsula to be a seating area for the kids to watch Judiaann (and me!) cook. When I was a kid we had a similar counter and I really loved to sit and draw and hang out while my mom cooked. I want the same thing for my kids. 

But the space for the peninsula is limited to the existing kitchen foot print. While you could extend the counter outward, into the main room, it would look horrible and ruin all the work we've done to open the space and keep the clean lines. Then it hit me. The boxes of the peninsula were oversized and we were already using the largest drawer slides but there was still space at the back for the plumbing and electric but they were only at the bottom.  The only space you need room on a counter is for your knees and luckily my knees, and the rest of my families knees are all located much higher. 

If I kicked the top of the back side of the cabinet bases I could have plenty of knee room and the counter could stay within the "space" of the kitchen. 

Here I'm testing the counter height, knee kick and what I imagine will be the stool height. Once I'm in the house and am caught up on the pressing construction I'll build some nice stools for the counter but it's way down on my list right now. Ikea will do for the time being. 

One of the main reasons for wanting to go with laminate is that it's very flexible and easy to work with and it's also sort of period correct. That is low on my list of reasons but it's nice. Besides, I really like the stuff and am sort of tired of all the Corian and marble. The other reason is because I found these amazing sinks from Karran. They are designed to be set flush with the laminate with a zero inset and it's a very cool look. It is the perfect sink for formica but it's a chore to install. 

You place the sink on the underside of the counter and trace a slightly oversize opening which you cut out with a jigsaw. 

Then you bury the edge in your build up which is part of what supports the sink. 

When the top is just proud of the surface of the counter and there's a small gap all around the sink you mix up some bondo (auto body filler) and force it into the gap to capture the sink and seal it to the counter. 

Once the bondo has hardened (about 15-30 min) you then use a belt sander to flush the bondo and sink edge to the countertop. 

Then you laminate the counter as you normally would with contact adhesive but the only difference is that a special adhesive is used around the lip of the sink. 

Once the laminate is down and the epoxy has had time to cure (about an hour) you rout out the sink area with tapered bit with oversize bearing. 

Unlike their video of the installation my sink didn't route out smoothly due to squeezed out adhesive. It didn't stick to the stainless but it was time consuming to chip out. 

Once cleaned though the router made a very smooth path around the since and cleaned up the edge nicely. 

And this was the whole goal - a very nice clean white counter that appears to have a sink carved out of it's stainless inner core. It's a very cool look and and takes full advantage of laminate. 

After the sink and counters were done I spent time addressing the plumbing under the sink working to keep the lines and drains as compact and reward as possible to allow for the greatest amount of space inside the drawers. 

I'm very happy with the layout of the counter, sink and plumbing. I feel like I'm packing the ingenuity of a VW camper into a full size house and getting out twice the usable space while maintaining the big open feel of the period. 

And more than anything I'm thrilled to finally have a move in date - in two weeks. Lots of stuff still go but at least there's light at the end of the tunnel.