I’ve slowly been making progress on the cabinets around the sink. It’s been frustrating, hence the very long delay in getting this post up.

Since the bump-out is hard to see and reach into, I decided to glue the backsplash tiles onto a piece of wood that “stands up” behind the cabinet — this way I don’t have to worry about trying to glue in two separate backsplash pieces in exactly the right spot to make them level.

I started by tracing around the top of the sink.

Then I drew lines to indicate where the window trim would go.

Here’s what I ended up with. I thought it would be easier to glue the trim to this piece of wood than to the wall. The XXX part is a sliver that will need to be cut out above the bottom piece of trim.

I started at the top edge so I wouldn’t end up with slivers under the cabinets. These tiles are made from scrapbook paper cut with a 1/4″ x 1/8″ punch (read more about it here).

Since this piece of wood goes behind the cabinet and sink, the tiles run behind the sink corner and the countertop, so there’s a neat transition.

And here are both sides finished. I trimmed the tiles hanging over the edges with nail scissors.

Continue reading

The last step for the kitbashed sink cabinet is to add the countertop. I started by cutting 3/16″ x 1″ strip wood to fit on the left and right of the sink.

When I put these in the nook to see how they fit, the piece on the left skewed so the right corner is sticking out. The back left corner must not be square.

I used the disc sander to sand the back edge at an angle.

That works. It’s not quite flush with the wall at the back, but I’ll hide that when I add the backsplash (if it’s even noticeable).

I colored the corners with a black Sharpie in case they’re visible.

Then I started adding scrapbook paper tiles, the same way I did for the other countertops. These are 1/4″ squares cut with a punch. The black ones on the front are folded over the edge.

I thought it would look good to center the white tiles (as shown above), but this would have required cutting almost every tile to fit. Too fiddly.

Instead I laid them out so there are half and full tiles at the edge that meets up with the sink. No picture of this because it came out fuzzy, but I made the little triangles by gluing the tiles on whole, and then trimming the edges with nail scissors.

Here’s how they look on both sides. If I had used slightly taller basswood for the countertop, it would have lined up with the edge of the sink, but I wanted the counter height to match the other cabinets.

(Alternatively I could have used a thinner piece under the sink, so the sink would be sit little lower and would have looked more like an apron sink, but that didn’t occur to me until just now. D’oh.)

Continue reading