Getting started

This double bowl stainless steel sink was changed to an apron front single bowl stainless.
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We arrived at 9:38 am, had the sink removed by 9:59 am, the faucet and air switch gone at 10:08 am, and the cabinet front tapped off by 10:21 am.

Measure once

Before you can begin cutting stone, you have to know the dimensions over which you have no control. On this Kohler K-3943 that’s the distance from the back of the apron which will touch the cabinet front to the rear sink opening which is about 18 ¼”.
You need this information to determine if you will have a positive or negative sink reveal and how large that reveal may be. We prefer the smallest possible positive reveal which is having the stone begin right after the curve at the sink flange. Unlike a negative reveal which hides the flange completely and is much more forgiving, this requires very accurate measuring and cutting to look good. The trade-off is, we don’t have to round the bottom of the stone at the cut-out and there is no crud ledge created.

Measure twice

The pencil is sitting at 1 ¾”, which is the amount the top overhangs the cabinet front. From there, the rear of the sink cut-out measured about 17 5/8” which means we had to remove ¾” to get my 1/8” positive reveal. Of course, you’ve got to center the new sink cut-out in the cabinet perfectly.

Cut once

We started cutting stone at 11:15 am. Our Festool rail saw only leaves that much dust on the countertop when we start cutting before we realize that we haven’t connected the vacuum hose. We repeated several passes to avoid over straining our saw. When we save the last 1/8” of stone for the last pass, the cuts are nearly dust-free.
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Remember to always cut the right side first so the front sink rail supports the saw rail. The rough opening, including nibbling the corners with our vacuumed grinder, was completed at 12:10 pm.

Getting the sink in

The Hercules Universal Sink Harness is attached to the cabinet sides. However, the altered cabinet front can’t be installed yet because you can’t get the sink in. You can’t put the sink in and tighten the harness without the cabinet front because the cabinet front keeps the cabinet sides from pulling in when the harness is tightened.
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With the sink clamped in place, we siliconed the flange, slid the cabinet front up and behind the apron and tapped it back into place then clamped the sink into position and tightened the harness. You should see lots of pretty silicone squeeze-out. We ran a bead of hot melt glue at the back sides of the cabinet front, just like the factory did, then screwed the cabinet front to the adjacent cabinet and dishwasher. The sink was in and the front was on at 3:49 pm.

New sink installed

We went shopping for plumbing at 4:56 pm and was back at 5:42 pm. The sink was operational at 6:33 pm and we were in our truck seat at 7:15 pm. 9 hours 37 minutes’ total, excluding drive time which was a half hour each way.