Thread: Conundrum - How to repair the end cabinet in U shaped kitchen

Like they say, a picture's worth a thousand words. If you can get a picture it will help in giving you the correct advice.
It should be fairly straight forward, if your kitchen is reasonably modern. Most kitchens, these days, are sort of modular, so the sink cabinet should be one piece that can be removed with everything else left in place.
Without seeing the actual kitchen, it's hard to give any specific advice.
I do this sort of thing for a living. If you'd like to PM me, I can give you my phone number and we can discuss the problem.

CJ, unfortunately I wont have access for a few weeks, however it's encouraging that somebody has done this sort of thing before! I've previously taken apart a kitchen of this vintage and I'll be hoping the bit of benchtop with the sink will be locked together with knockdown type bolts and will come out without damaging too much of the surrounding. I guess I'm mainly trying to visualize how to construct a replacement cabinet in place around the existing plumbing, without being able to just drop in a premade carcass.

Would it not be a insurance claim, in which case they will replace what ever needs to be replaced

Probably not in this case China. We are starting a new 5 year plan. After watching our parents battle keeping old houses together beyond their capacity to maintain as their age advanced, we've decided we need to be in the house that we can die in (so to speak) by the time we are 70. We are looking to purchase a property we can downsize to in a few years before we either decide to renovate properly or bulldoze and rebuild.

The current property we have targeted has some issues with the kitchen. I believe any sane insurance company would consider the property bought in "as is" condition and not cover the repairs under a new owner's policy. Not wanting to be a slum landlord, the kitchen needs the sink cabinets fixed to bring up to rentable standard, but pulling out the whole thing and putting in even a new cheap kitchen is completely out of the budget.

Fair enough however don't despair there is pretty much a way to do anything once you can get a good look at it, it will most likely not be that difficult

A challenge perhaps but probably fixable. I wonder what is under the mystery box? After seeing the double bowl sink connection, I'm hoping the previous owner hasn't done any of his own rewiring as well.

mystery.jpg undersink.jpg

thats an uphill battle. At least anything you do will actually be an improvement !

To make it easier on yourself remove the waste trap and disconnect the water and gpo’s
If the existing cabinet is in ok condition apart from being grubby you could leave it in there and then just re-skin it all with new melamine or laminate sheet if that takes your fancy
It is a fiddly job but pretty straight forward

Yep reskinning looks to be the way to go. I'll see if things dry out when the bodgie milk bottle waste funnel is replaced with a proper double bowl sink waste kit and hope there isn't another water leak in the wall.

Originally Posted by Fuzzie

I'll see if things dry out when the bodgie milk bottle waste funnel is replaced with a proper double bowl sink waste kit and hope there isn't another water leak in the wall.

I'm quite shocked (although I probably shouldn't) to see that ad-hoc waste in that photo. Double check the fittings for the filter also. I recently had a similar situation with one of those plastic filter connectors failing. There was significant amount of water but in the end the cabinetry dried out enough to leave as is.


Regards,

Denim.

Too little time, too much to do.

After fixing innumerable other things I finally got around to working on the cabinet. After rearranging the double bowl sink drainage, I removed the water filter and associated plumbing to make as much clear space as possible. I washed down the mildew and sanded the backing boards then applied an undercoat and wall paint which at a quick glance looks OK now. I scraped off the original grotty base panel edging and ironed on a new edge banding that was wide enough to cover the swollen base board edge. The door with the blown mdf was a little more difficult. I decided to just do as little as possible to get the door closing, so I planed some of the swollen face back, applied a sealer undercoat then two top coats from a cheap white fliddly buts enamel spray can.

cab3.jpgcab1.jpgcab2.jpg

Not ideal, but much better than the original flaky board (I hope).