Ok, so now I'm going under the sink!

This is under at the front looking up towards left corner. You can see they chiseled the front piece of my cabinet & didn't do a good job. They even cracked it.
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You can see it was about a 3-4" front piece that is max of 2". now.
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Close up of the crack.
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This is the back left side. You can see they put a 2x4 piece of wood to help stabilize it!!
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This is all that's holding the back up.
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This is the right front corner where that big gap is on top.
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One of the owners is coming out tomorrow, so hopefully he'll see what a chop job they did. Wish me luck!

I don't like that white caulk...I would have thought a very light grey?

And my sink is flush with the bottom of my countertops (granite). There's actually a negative reveal - where the lip of the granite goes slightly over the sink...less gunk to get caught, etc. It's a very small space. I can't take pics right now but just looked...
my fabricator told me I would be unhappy with a positive reveal - I didn't think I'd like the look, but I'm so glad he talked me into it.

Good luck!

The type of reveal (negative, positive or flush) is personal preference. I prefer a positive reveal. The rest I don't know.

Thanks avntgardner. I'm a little confused. The positive reveal is when the sink comes out just a tiny bit from under the countertops, making a negative, where the sink & counter sides are flush straight up & down? I think these guys didn't install the sink correctly & they definitely didn't install it evenly. It's a little off kilter. One side is more flush than the other side.

It makes me so mad because I did my homework to find one of the best fabricators in the city. I've seen quite a few very disappointed ppl here w/ bad installations & didn't want that to be an issue. Every designer I talked to told me to go w/ these guys. Even at the slab yards, they were telling me to use them. I hope the owner tomorrow sees the bad craftmanship....if it could be called craftmanship.

If you have time to take a pic tomorrow, I'd love to see your sink & countertops.

Thanks for posting.

I'm no trebuchet but hopefully he will see this and weigh in with his expertise.

It is bad, to say the least.

You might try making a new thread with Trebs name in the title, he would surely have a LOT to say about this install.

The caulk should be the least of your concerns. I did some work like that, with my chainsaw. But it was for demolition of the cabinet.

I would expect your plumber to refuse to get under that mess for personal safety reasons.

I hope you have not paid yet.

@ Bicycle girl, print these photos out and provide to fabricator. Yes, he can get under there and take a look, but your photos clearly show defects. His eyesight might not.

Sink reveal is pretty much a matter of personal preference. If you do a google search with the terms gardenweb and sink reveal you will get lots of posts regarding the topic.
I copied the picture below from one of those posts to illustrate the different reveals.
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The installation instructions and templates that come with a sink should indicate what type of reveal should be used. On some sinks it doesn't matter.
My sink was installed with flush with no reveal.

Regardless of the type of reveal, it should be even all the way around the sink and you should not have a gap like you have between the top of the sink and the bottom of the countertop.
There are some experts on here that could give you more advice but maybe you should post again wording the subject of your posting a little different or more specific, indicating that you are concerned about the installation of your sink. You may get more responses.
Good luck in getting this problem resolved

How is the sink being held up?

I posted a thread for Trebuchet, linking to this. Hope he sees it and is able to give you input before the owner comes out.

Your countertop looks amazing! Please remind me what you selected. The caulk looks dreadful. That can be fixed easily though. This website matches grout to caulk - love it.

Good luck today!

Here is a link that might be useful: Colored caulk

What brand sink is this? Part of the issue looks to be that the sink itself isn't flat and level. They should have refused to do the job at all and explained to you why. The butchery on your sink base is why I am not a fan of ever shoehorning a too large sink into a too small sink cabinet. It's never pretty. At least they used clips!

But, for a heavy cast iron or fireclay sink, I'm not comfortable with clips alone. Additional bracing would be in order. This is where your cabinet installer comes into play. He should have rough fit the sink intothe base and built a cradle for it's support, as well as taken care of any alterations to the cabinet that were needed. He could have also brought it to your attention that the sink was not level if that is the case.

Who is the GC on the job? The cordination of trades and inspection of materials is not up to par.

oldbat, thank you so very much for posting for Tre. I do hope he chimes in. He's always full of great advice & thoughts on what to do. That was very thoughtful of you to get that out there for him.
Good idea on the pics mags.
Badgergal.....perfect! I'm a visual person, so that explains what I was needing. I'm a positive reveal person! Didn't quite get there! I love your sink & countertops. Very pretty.
blfenton, I think it's just being held up w/ those clips, which I guess from GreenDesigns post, must be good to use, just not alone on a heavy sink.
GreenDesigns, my cabinets are IKEA, so no rough fit from them. I'm GC'ing this small job. I've been lucky to not have any problems so far, but this one was something I wasn't prepared for. MY bad. I have a wonderful carpenter/builder that has been helping me w/ most of the job. It didn't occur to me to ask him anything about this because I knew the fabricator installs them. Again, this co. is one of the best in Austin. I had so many ppl tell me to use them, that they were the best. I talked to designers & a couple small builders that all said to use these guys. A couple of the stone yards said they'd use them on their own projects. I felt like I was in good hands. The countertops look good, actually great! But this sink installation was over these guys heads. The sink is a Shaw fireclay, I believe fireclay.
oldbat, the countertops are a carrara marble & they are very pretty. I'll show a better picture of them later. Thank you for the colored caulk link, as well. I assume most fabricators use colored caulk?
Good one jtsnj! I can just see my carpenter rolling his eyes when he sees this one!

Well, I hope Tre chimes in before I meet the owner today.

Thanks to all of you for your help. I'll let you know what happens later today.

How is this an Ikea kitchen?? Nothing shown under the sink base is Ikea. Looks site built rather than Ikea. Fireclay sinks are known for their handmade irregularities, but if the sink is actually as out of level as the pic seem to show, that would be a second, not a first quality. Where did you purchase the sink? Do you have pics of the sink before it was uninstalled?

As far as the caulk, if it's clear, it will probably be fine once it's dried. At least with the splashes. Around the sink is another matter. The gap is too much for caulk to bridge.

What can happen next will be determined by whether or not the sink has a flat rim or not. If the gap is due to installation, and not a product defect, that's remedied by cutting a larger hole in the counter and remounting the sink correctly. Not an easy site fix, but doable with the right skills.

If the sink itself is defective, then it has to be removed and replaced, and the new one carefully scrutinized to check both the flatness, and the size. Fireclay can vary in size up to 3%, which is why fabricators should never use a template with the sink, and wait until the particular sink is looked at before cutting.

I am a fabricator.

Normally the sink should be tight to the countertop all the way around. Occasionally on cast sinks the top of the sink isn't flat and it's impossible to get it tight to the countertop all the way around. In this case typically an installer would locate the inevitable gap on the front side (away from the wall) since the gap would be least noticable there.

Re: cutting the cabinets; this is common and almost always necessary to get the sink installed. The cabinet builders use wide pieces in the area where the sink will be to provide structural rigidity to the large sink cabinets for transport and install.

Regarding the caulk; It's actually an exceptionally nice job of application. The color match is somewhat subjective and with white stone like yours it's often preferable to use a clear because it can be difficult to get a good color match on white.

The split in the cabinet in my opinion is not a big deal. You'll never see it again unless looked for and the structural integrity of the cabinet is not compromised.

livewire, it is IKEA. Just curious, what makes it not look IKEA? My carpenter modified the sink cab. They only had one that was really small or one that was too large, so he cut it down. I didn't know having that small of a space for the size of the sink would be that big of a problem. Finding a sink that wasn't the size of a bar sink & not 36" +, was a challenge. And, my kitchen is small, so couldn't go w/ too big of sink cab. The sink is Rohl & better not be a 2nd because I paid royally for it! I got it from Build.com, where I've gotten a few other things, as well as, a few friends have too, & we've all had great results w/ them. It was in the Rohl box with the authenticity slip Rohl puts in the boxes of their products. So, I don't think it was a 2nd. Unfortunately, they took the box w/ them & threw it away. I walked outside at one point & saw the box & had a quick gut feeling that maybe I should get it. But, I didn't!

I was aware that fireclay can have irregularities. I looked at it & it appeared to be ok & didn't look uneven. Didn't take pictures of it. Didn't think about it. I actually handed over to the fabricator about 2 months ago. I would have thought they would be taking a good look at it before making any cutouts for it. I think these installers were in over their heads w/ the sink installation. I guess it's going to have to be taken out no matter what. It's off centered & obviously not flat. I really thought they knew what they were doing.

oldryder, good to hear from you. Thanks for chiming in. I am a little concerned about the stability of the cabinet. It's a little hard to tell in the picture, but that piece where the crack is, is actually hanging down some. So, the crack goes up pretty good into that piece of wood. I'll have my carpenter look at it & get his thoughts.

I thought they did a good job w/ the caulk line too. It was the stark white up against the grey tone that I thought was cheesy. I left my house fairly early this morning, so didn't have a chance to scrutinize the new clear caulk, but it looked pretty good. I did think it made that area of the marble there look more of a darker grey. It could have been the light, but it seemed that way to me. Is there a certain type of caulk to use on projects like this?

Thank you all for your help.

That was the sink I was considering for my last remodel and I remember it was going to be a tight squeeze into a 31" cabinet. I also remember that to support the sink they were either going to have to build a shelf for it or put some kind of wooden bracing behind it the sink because it is sooooo heavy. There just wasn't enough room to do it comfortably so sadly I decided against the fireclay sink.

Personally I would be very worried about your sink crashing to the ground. The fact that it is separated from the countertop makes it look very precarious to me. I am not an expert but I don't think those clips are enough for the weight of fireclay.

No, those clips aren't enough for fireclay. And those bits of wood in the hack aren't either. I'm really afraid that the hack is part of the reason for the problem, but with only those few pics with the wood showing, it's really hard to tell. If that was the wooden support that the carpenter built, it wasn't correct or sufficient either. Not sure why it would be there otherwise. The nature of the hack isn't quite clear to me. As a rule, the cabinet for a sink needs to be 3" larger than the sink in order for the support for the sink to attach correctly.

jerzeegirl, I'm beginning to wonder if that's what I should have done. I just couldn't find much in a 28" +/- size sink. 25" sounded so small, then anything above 30" was 36" & waaay too big. What did you end up going w/?

livewire, the hacking you see is not from my carpenter. My carpenter is really good. All he did was cut the back wall from a 38" sink cabinet down to appx 32" or 33", I think. But, everything you see that's bad, is from the fabricator guys that tried to install the sink. The pieces of wood you see inside, are what they put in there to hold the sink up! The hacked up front piece, was about a 3" wide piece of wood - front to back, that they chopped up to fit the sink in. This was a perfectly good empty cabinet w/ just 3 walls to it until yesterday. I sent my carpenter some pictures & he was shocked! He's going to come over this weekend. I know he'll be able to fix it, if it comes down to it. I'm meeting w/ one of the owners tomorrow to see what he thinks. I still owe them $ & do not plan on giving them any of the remainder until I see what it's going to take to make it right. Whether my guy comes in & fixes it or the owner does something else. I can tell you, I will not let the guys that did this, come back to try again. No way!

It's so very frustrating. I've had pretty good luck w/ most of my stuff, but the 2 things that I did my reasearch on & got referrals on, were the 2 things that turned out to be bad. This is one & the other was my floors. I'm still sick about those. I think this will be ok, but we'll see.

Thanks again!

The guys who installed the sink didn't understand how the sink fasteners work. They installed a wood cleat which seems to be doing all the work and they're not taking advantage of the adjustment on the fasteners which would eliminate the gap between the sink flange and the bottom of the top.

I don't like these fasteners because they bear on the relatively brittle stone top instead of the cabinets as does a Hercules Universal Sink Harness or the linked ones:

The front cabinet rail is not structural. As long as the veneer isn't cracked, and it isn't, the chew marks are irrelevant.

Here is a link that might be useful: New clips

This post was edited by Trebruchet on Thu, Feb 5, 15 at 19:18

bicyclegirl: I remember having exactly that problem - the sinks were all either too big or too small. None of them were just right. I gave up and bought a Kohler Bakersfield drop in sink. Because it was a drop in there was no problem with fitting the sink into the cabinet. It ended up being okay for the style of kitchen I was doing.

Thanks for dropping in Tre.

I have no idea which one's are the wood cleats, but this sink is going to have to come out, no matter what, because it's not centered in the opening. My biggest fear is having to back those screws out of the sink & stone. Could that be a potential problem w/ the marble, or the sink or cabinet? I sooo hope not. This is my 2nd slab of marble & I really don't want to have to look for another one! The 1st one was delivered to them on a Thursday, they left it outside with a rainstorm all weekend. No big deal, but on Monday when they got back, my marble was covered in big ole rust spots. It had been laid up against a slab of something that had iron in it. I had looked for that slab for months! But, it all ended up ok because I like this one better. So, it better be ok!

The next thing going on that sink is a Hercules Sink Harness or those brackets you linked to.

Thanks for following up w/ me. Greatly appreciated.

Why is that jerzee? I kept looking for one that was around 27-28", but nooooo, there was nothing. Or, at least that I wanted. I ended up having to buy a much larger sink cab that I had hacked down to accomodate - or I thought would accomodate - the sink! I should have left another inch or 2 on it! Oh well, I should have just done what you did! Hopefully the Hercules strap or those clips Tre suggested, will work. We'll see!

Bicycle girl,
I am a little confused. Is this the Rohl Allia sink in a 30" Ikea cabinet? The reason I ask is that the cabinet does not appear to be an Ikea cabinet. The holes in the side panel are huge and Ikea cabinets don't look that large. It is also missing the top wooden piece that spans the cabinet from left to right. Can you take a better picture? The Rohl Allia fits in a 36" Ikea cabinet not the 30". The sink is usually 32" wide at the base.
Best of luck.

Hi homepro,

No, this is a Rohl Shaw classic 30". And, this is an IKEA cabinet. Those holes may look big because of the up close pictures. I just took some pictures pulled back that I'll post later. I need to go to work in a few minutes. This is not a 30" cabinet tho. It's been awhile since the cabinets were done, so I don't remember the exact measurements. But, the bottom line is, IKEA didn't have a sink cab in a size that would have been perfect for a combination of my sink & my small kitchen. So I think I bought a 36-38" sink cab that my carpenter cut the back width piece down, making it something like 32-33". Again, not 100% sure on the #'s. That top wooden piece that spans the top of the cabinet left to right, is that piece you see in the front that was hacked to death! If we're talking about the same piece, it was probably about 3+/- " in width (front to back).

I was a bit concerned about buying this sink because of it's size. But, while I was trying to make this decision before the cab's were bought, I was researching sinks. On GW there was a post about someone putting a sink into a cabinet that only gave about an inch or so on the sides. Tre gave her advice on how to make it work, so I felt confident this could be done w/ the configuration I had decided to go w/. I think he suggested she do it w/ the Hercules strap. I had asked the guy at the fabricator place if they use these straps. He said something about yes but not the Hercules. I think he might have said something about it being one they make. Either he didn't understand me, or he BS'd me, figuring they'd be able to put the sink because they put in sinks all of the time. This co. has been around for a long time. 20+ years. So, I'm not sure what's going on w/ this chop job. Maybe this was a new crew. I don't know. One of the 2 owners is going to come over today, so I'll know what his thoughts on this job are then. I can't imagine he thinks this is a good job! I'll fill you guys in later on my visit w/ him.

Thanks.