How to Remove Kitchen Sink Cabinet, Protect Granite Counters

hey everybody Jeff here welcome back to the channel where we give you world class videos on remodeling your homes your kitchens and your bathrooms and we show you how to do all sorts of difficult repairs around your house and tool reviews if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet man make sure you do that right now before you forget so you don't miss out and click that little gray Bell icon otherwise YouTube will never alert you when we upload videos and you'll miss out so in today's video we're doing another one of our Mission Impossible repairs here so we're standing here at our friend's house here and what happened was there was a pretty bad leak that occurred under their kitchen cabinet here in the base cabinet and it caused a lot of wood damage so guess what so what we have to do now is we got to remove this whole face cabinet right here what makes it so difficult is it's so engrained into the system here you've got this big fragile granite countertop here that you have to be super gentle with and make sure you don't hurt it so as you recall when they install cabinets in granite countertops over the cabinet they usually put a big thick bead of silicone Eagles all the way around the perimeter of the top of the cabinet so we're going to have to chisel our way through all of that stuff we have to take out all of the plumbing down there all of the garbage disposal is down there but I think we're going to end up removing this sink and that's going to be another problem too because the sink is siliconed to the bottom of this granite as well these cabinets they look pretty nice they were installed about 10 years ago but for some reason I guess a lot of water splashing and wear and tear here on this front panel and this is so typical I hate it when granite people do this I don't allow this on any of my projects but see how they get the seam here and it continues in the back there and they didn't even put it like in the middle of the the sink either so it's just off-center it looks awkward there was no reason why on this slab of green in here they could not have done this without a seam this whole thing this whole countertop section right here should have been able to be done in one whole section see I do kitchens like these all the time and I always instruct my granite guys to carve me one single piece there's no reason for this thing to have been done in two pieces here this is easily a one-piece granite countertop right here before we begin you can see what we're doing here is we've put tape over the front part of the granite here to protect it because we're going to probably start using our manual tool here at by hand and see if we can't slice through all of the silicon that's got the granite countertop glued down to the top of the of the cabinet here so you want to make sure in case you slip you don't want to come up and scratch the surface there and then you're protected if you have to put a tool or part down or something and then we have cloth on the counter here to prevent scrape so the first thing we want to do now is to remove these doors okay so I'm trying to shine the light in the good enough for you to see if you look way back in there you'll see that kind of dark reddish brown that's the caulk or the silicon whatever it was they used the adhesive to to cement down the granite countertop on top of this base cabinet so we have to slice through all of that we have to figure out how we're going to slice through it whether we use a utility knife or maybe one of those drywall hole saws or we might use an oscillating tool or sawzall but either way we have to be very gentle here to make sure that we do not crack this granite countertop here okay so remember these are the four screws that we said was going through the cabinet wall and into the next cabinet so by checking off the doors we'll also be helping to separate the two cabinets and it doesn't look like these are long enough to pierce all the way through so they had the holes drilled the pilot holes over there but they never ran the screws [Music] okay so I've got my professional plumbers pan here we're gonna drain out the peach wrap so I can remove it let it equalize for a few seconds there before you do the rest of it he's doing his little Austin Powers oh dude it's tags - here we go that says to me we didn't have a slope going back towards the wall there should be a downward slope otherwise the water wouldn't be running back out that pipe like this okay so we separate these now now I'm gonna get my hex driver and undo these two this kit here it's still a 5/16 it's a 5/16 X there so this will work on those nuts okay so loosen all three of these here [Music] huh still some water in there that's why I thought it was good to let it drain it to your little pan there see that so this is why folks say there shouldn't be that much water in that hose so this is why when you do your high loop here on the hose the hose is not supposed to come back up at an angle like that a lot of people erroneously do that it's supposed to come straight you know kind of at a decline from up top there and if you don't have that decline there then you didn't route the hose properly then down here for the p-trap arm it's going through this connector here onto the looks like the old middle waistline there so we got to get those two nuts off in there as well now you can see I've stuck just a little piece of paper towel in here for a while just to keep the smell from coming through till we can get the appropriate cap put on there because normally we deal with one and a half inch PVC pipe coming out of the wall for our dwv that's our drain waste vent type pipe this one's metal and so it's thin it's a whole different size so we'll have to go get a cap from it from our little supply bin okay they don't have a gem Buster tool or anything here and I always tell people you know the tool that comes with this thing either tape it to it or tape it to the wall or put it up in one of the drawers but you should always hang on of those things nobody ever does so I'm just going to use the screwdriver there she goes okay now we want to make sure there's no power going to that outlet so we turn off the switch make sure it's off and our indicator is telling us there's no power there now we're going to loosen all the hoses and get them off okay he's off now I'll get this other two over here now what we want to do is we're going to take our drywall knife here and we're just going to try to stick it in here and see if it can pierce through and yeah you can see we were able to pierce through the silicone there so we're just going to kind of gently tug and pull and it might take us a while but we want to see if we can cut through it all and go all the way across the other two that's awful here is if you get one of those really rigid type fifteen and one painters tools here it goes really good okay so now we're gonna try the sawzall and we're just going to stick the blade in there are little ways and go come on this side of it here we're just going to stick the blade in here a little ways and see if it'll cut through and I got really slow we don't want to cause any we don't want to cause any high amounts of vibration that could crack the granite okay so after several minutes of using both of these tools here along with the sawzall we're able to cut cleanly all the way across see so I cannot put my fifteen in one tool here and we can drag it all the way across there soon we've had a few areas where it's still gummed up but it's it's cleared because I can see the light all the way through so that's how you know you're separated when you can see all that light shining through there see if you look right along here you could see all the light shining through right there where my fingers pointing all the way across there building codes the back of your vanity or base cabinet is supposed to be screwed to the wall and there's the screw right so we have to undo that one as well so it's the way that works is there is a usually a wood furring strip or a wood stud that's back in there behind the drywall in this case there's a cement block loss I know it's a it's a wood four ring strip that's back there and so they just screw it right into that wood flooring strip that's required by code because you have to be able to make sure that these cabinets can't move or be pushed or bumped or anything there's the view from inside the base cabinet now as we look um the sink you can see all of these brackets here we have to undo those brackets that are holding the sink to the granite they're all over couple there there's more on this side let me get the camera around here and show you so there's more on this side there I see they go all the way around so we just have to undo those bracket and they'll be some silicone that we'll have to maybe just push down from above and see if we can't break that seal now that we've loosened the bracket we're just going to push down gently on the sink not hard we just want to overcome the force of the silicone that was used to glue it into place here see that so we got that part down and just gently push the other parts they may not come as easily but you just got a gently don't overdo it because you'll break the granite [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now they couldn't figure out why the cabinet wouldn't budge so we found behind the footplate it's a good thing we pulled the footplate because there's a screw right there see that's what's tying this bass cabinet here to the cabinet next to it well sometimes just finding all of the screws that you need to undo it can take you an hour so after we were fighting a fighting and it still wasn't going we decided to pull the drawer out here of the unit next to it and sure enough we found one more screw that we need to undo right there because that's what's keeping this cabinet from pulling out there we go just loosening this last screw here the cabinet next door to it that's what was holding it back this whole time yeah there we go told you we'd get this puppy out of here freedom at last [Music] you well as you can see here we got the cabinet out okay and praise God man we did not ruin the the granite what I was really concerned about is there's a seam right here so now that this seam is going to be hanging we've cut a piece of wood here and we're going to put this wood underneath here and just to shore it up so that it won't sag or anything and so it will have to stay here until we put that the new cabinet in and take its place here but so now I'll put the two water valves back on over here and we'll turn the water back on [Music] [Applause] [Applause] okay now we want to carefully scrape up all of this previous silicon that you had here on the floor everything has to be going if they were perfectly smooth entry to slog in there with the new cabinet right so here we have the old kitchen base cabinet on the left here and on the right is the new one and so all we have to do now is these holes that you see here on the old cabinet we have to transfer them over to the new one since this is the exact same cabinet model all we did was just go pick up a new one we're going to just measure the exact spot where these holes were put here transfer those measurements here and make the cuts to point out something to you here this is the hole here for the high loop that's the drain hose from the dishwasher now you can see whoever did this hole here they kind of messed it up so when they drilled from the backside which is bad and so when it popped over here it just that's what happens when you don't plan your holes properly so we'll show you here how to cut these holes correctly so that you don't get this type of splintering so what you're supposed to do is see this is the good side this is the visible side the back side is what we call the you know the bad side that the non visible side what you're supposed to do is take your hole saw and start the hole on the back side and cut in just a little bit like an eighth of an inch deep just enough to start it on the back side so you have a clean cut and you come back around on the good side and drill all the way through here and pop out on the back side and since we'd already have a starter hole on this backside here it would be already clean you won't get any any kind of splintering on either side we'll show you that it's really easy okay so here we've already marked our measurements where the holes are going to be the outlet will get cut here the hutt and cold water pipes are going here the waste drain going into the wall will go here and then over here will be the hole for the dishwasher hose we have this other hole here we gonna do that's for the hose so the water supply to the dishwasher whereas this upper hole here was the hole for the drain hose okay we'll start with that hole up in the corner there for the dishwasher hose and we're just going to run just the drill bit part of this whole dozer right into the center of the hole so now that we have the hole started we insert the center of it through the hole the pilot hole then we just start a nice clean smooth hole there we don't go all the way through all right that's good right there so now you can see we have a smooth hole cut there's no splinters there so now we're going to come back to the other side and drill through so there's our drill bit poking through [Music] there you have it so then we come back over here we peel off the tape and you can see you've got a reasonably smooth hole there get all the tape off and that's how you do it now you tell me which looks better this here or this hole over here and done by an obviously overqualified professional and now we're doing the waist the waistline here we're going to start our pilot hole right through the center okay so we poked through the other side the other side [Music] okay so we just did our cutting our groove hole on the backside we didn't poke all the way through so now we have to come back around on the good side [Music] [Music] and there you have it a nice clean hole okay now we're gonna run our pilot for the too hot and water and the cold water pipes here we're going with a smaller diameter than what they originally had that's I felt that the hole the hole was too big that they made for half-inch pipes [Music] ok so now we're going to try cutting our outlet hole here with our sonicrafter muffy to see if it works [Music] okay so here's our two cabinets and now all of the holes are finished here and you can see how we just duplicated what holes were here on the old one transferred the measurements over here to the new one and now we're ready to install it under the cabinet slide it right back in underneath the granite gingerly without destroying the granite keeping in mind that we have maybe an eighth of an inch space between the top of this and the granite and we'll shim up from underneath you see the mess they made with their holes especially that one and then you come over here and you look at this this is much cleaner more professional and we made the holes for the hut and water and cold water pipes here or smaller which is what they should be because you're dealing with only a half-inch copper pipe whereas over here and they made it one and a half inch holes which is typically done by guys who aren't very accurate with their measurements so they make the holes baked to give themselves more margin for error but if you're careful with your measuring you don't need margin forever because there is no error okay so now as you look at this outlet here for the garbage disposal I don't like what they do do this is how we found it see this black thin gauge stranded wire I think that's the wrong gauge wire to begin with second of all I don't know what it's doing or why isn't it connected to a ground if there is indeed a ground in there so we have to pull this outlet out and figure out what's going on so I guess when they were working on this somebody was unqualified here and when they installed and the way they had it installed on the cabinet was wrong this is a violation of Electric code right here the outlet should not be sticking out beyond the front surface of the wall there see those two terminal screws there those are exposed at the very least if you're going to do something that's stupid you should wrap it with electrical tape first so nobody could ever touch it so what we're supposed to use here is what you see right here this is an outlet box extender that goes in there and it brings the outlet out to the surface and yet protects it in shields at the terminals there so that's what we're going to install but we also need to pull the outlet out it pulled out the outlet and yes immediately I can see what's wrong here so when they installed the metal here they did it correctly you can see the builder whoever installed his metal box they correctly bonded it to the system ground if you look back at the bottom in the middle of the screen there in the box you'll see the bare copper ground wire is wrapped around a screw that's attached to the metal box and that's called bonding the box to system ground which is required by National Electric Code but when they put in this outlet they just lift this black wire dangling so somebody was just completely idiotic completely unqualified and this is why I warned you about having people who are not licensed electricians or people that really know what they're doing to do work on your outlets like this so I happen to have I believe with me out of my electrical bag in the trunk a green pigtail grounding wire that we'll use and we'll connect it to that existing screw right there at the bottom of the box and it will run to this block where the black wire is going here to a grounding screw here and that will in turn ground our electrical outlet properly okay so here you can see we just added that green that's a ground pigtail wire there back out a little show you there so this is a picture wire and it comes with a green scrutiny so you can see in the back of the outlet box there the green screw is screwed right into the outlet box so there's a hole there that was threaded and our ground screw is meant to go in there and so we've now added the proper ground wire that was needed for the outlet so we're gonna just keep these waters bunched together and move the cabinet into place and feed the wires through that hole that we cut in the back of the cabinet and then we'll attach the outlet on the inside [Music] so there's our outlet and you can see I've got it properly wired now we now have a ground wire going to the bonding of the middle box back there too so if you look here too I'm one of the few people that actually does this you can see I wrapped in electrical tape so now the terminals are protected because remember that's a tight little metal box they got back there so I always try to make sure you don't ever have metal touching metal but I do this on all of my switches and on all of my outlets it's just a good practice to wrap them up I think with the electrical tape afterwards all right so we've got the outlet in place we have our two dual valves in place now and if you've seen our video on the alternatives for saddle valves which I'll put a link to down in the description below for you you'll see how we install these why we do this type of dual valve here but essentially it allows you to add other things see on the left here you can see on the hot water dual valve there there's two connections for hoses so one will go to the sink the other will go to the dishwashing machine here and then over here on the right on the cold water there's two connections one goes to the the sink to the faucet there and the other one is a quarter-inch one and that one will go to the icemaker line there so this way you don't have to add a saddle valve and you know how I feel about saddle valves you've seen our videos on those and why you should never use them but this is our preferred method of doing valves under the kitchen sink right here okay so now we want to shim up under the granite here because there is still a finite space under here we have a sealed up with silicon but you still want to give it some support so what we're doing is we're snapping off our shims here at the proper thickness and then we're gonna stick it from behind here right with a seam and see that opening there that's where the seam is so I want to make sure we have one right under there we stick the shim in from behind and we'll push it in a little further and wedge it in tight and then once it's in there tight we'll snap it off on the inside that way we'll have good support under this granite counter here to keep it from potentially cracking later and then we'll have one over here and this one over here will go in there as well okay so now we're going to put the sink back gone so you can see we've started to already add the brackets back into place here now you can see the outline of where the sink is going to go it's kind of still right here so I set the bracket so they're out of the way and then we're going to bring the sink in from under here or through here he'll be holding the sink up that way as we tighten these brackets down real quick it should only take a minute so we'll put a bead of silicone around the top of the sink first and you only got a few minutes before it starts to cure up on you okay and there's our silicone bead all the way around the edge once we get it on I'll do another bead between here and the green and all the way around look way up in the back corner there you can see the screw that we put there as required by code to screw the back of the cabinet on to the wall there is a stud right behind this and so we could feel it we know that the screw grabbed hold it we are well secured into the wall okay things are starting to come together now I just put the garbage disposal in there on the left and you can see the hoses coming down from the new kitchen faucet that we're installing we decided to spruce things up here okay so if you look back here in the corner here we're getting ready to put the dishwasher back in here but see how the power cord goes to an outlet that's a no-no that's actually not allowed by code what they're supposed to do is run the cord along the ground and then it's supposed to come in through the bottom here and then it's supposed to meet up over with the electrical outlet there where the garbage disposal plugs in there so this must have been done you know years ago this is probably how they few people did it I don't even like this plug they're using an extension cord and on top of that you can see it's going to kind of get bent a little when it when we put this back in we're not going to try to redo this that's not in the scope of this repair today unfortunately because you'd have to be able to dig into the that's a concrete block wall back there and you'd have to rerun wires to the you probably won't have to rerun because they would go this way but it would be just a lot of work inside the wall of redoing the wires to get everything back in here have it wiring over here on the bottom receptacle of that duplex outlet there all right so now we have everything hooked up now you can see here if you remember before how the how the drain hose from the dishwasher right here how it was before it was coming here and slanting down right and then going back up so now we what we did here was we did our high side loop I still don't like the way they did it I really don't like it when they bring it in through the hole up top there like that but what we did was we brought it in that hole and we came up to the counter and then it slopes down from the counter so that's how you get your high loop sometimes we'll bring it in from the bottom here and we strap it up the side of the cabinet all the way up to the counter and then bring it back down again and then over to the garbage disposal but the important thing here is that we're sloping down to the garbage disposal instead of sloping up to it so that's a mistake a lot of people make a lot of installers even professional installers don't understand the plumbing codes that you need that in Tai booth so a lot of installers will totally blow it because they'll bring the hose in here and go straight up to the garbage disposal which is just completely not the way to do it so now we're going to do our water test okay so the first time before you turn on the water remove the aerator because there could be sediment trapped in there and on the faucet they're from the factory so you're always supposed to remove the aerator just let it run for a few seconds and then you can stop it and put the aerator back on okay so I filled up this Basin here with hot water so we're going to pull the plug on it that's a good way to test your plumbing there see how it's doing so we want to make sure there's there is some dripping there okay so we fixed the garbage disposal tightened it down better now there's no more leak so what happened was sometimes when you tighten that ring when you put the garbage disposal back on if you're a little bit crooked one side of it won't make contact with the gasket so you really want to make sure that garbage disposal is perfectly straight up and down on level and you look right here to test and make sure that everything is okay there we don't have any other leaks anywhere else here we've tested the entire Basin they're filled with hot water and everything looks good now I thought I saw a drop over here too but we're gonna keep checking so that's what you do just keep checking all your spots here we're gonna be replacing all this anyway a lot of this is old and I don't like I don't like that fitting there what they did with that so we're going to be replacing this but just for now we're putting it back together just to see how everything looks but the trip test of time comes overnight with your p-trap so you always want to put like a piece of paper towel on the bottom there and leave it overnight and see whether any water slowly drips out of the trap seal which is right there there's a column of water that goes right in there and comes around up to here so we just want to make sure that that doesn't leak at all okay so now what we want to do here at the sink is we're going to take some silicone we're going to go around the edge and fill all of these you know even though the sink is all the way up against the bottom of the granite we still want to make sure that no water can get in here at all whatsoever see there's what it looks like underneath so I want to make sure that no water gets in there we'll run the silicone all the way around all right so I'm using 100% clear silicone here 100% pure silicone yeah I just want to quickly do I want to make sure we get weighed down in here really good so I shove a little more in there okay now I'm going to do this little section here now what I like to do is force it up in towards the crack okay what I'd like to do when I'm doing silicon is I'll fold the paper towel up and I always like to keep a wet one like this you just fold it up nice and square and straight like this that way I can take this wet edge and come right up here and clean the silicon off of the area where I don't want it right it's like instantly as soon as you wipe it because after only a few minutes it starts to cure and you won't be able to wipe it off very easily at all you know if you looked at you can see where the silicon is their own line in the middle of the screen but if you notice in the corner it looks like we missed a little bit of an opening that didn't quite fill in so we have to come back and add a little more in there and force it back in there to seal up that crack [Music] most sinks where I've seen a lot of leaks from different people over the years is right here people tend to get a lot of water leaking in through here even if you have the big plate even even if that plate has the plastic gasket you will still get leaks and I'll tell you why because plastic does not really seal very well up to the counter so that's why I will always run a bead of silicone around the base here you have to do that and then you can see we put these two caps here because we didn't want to install the soap dispenser and there was an old water filter here luckily with this the newer types of these caps here this came and brushed metal but what I like about this is it has big threads on the bottom side it pokes through and it's got the big plastic nut underneath holding it up just like some of the more modern faucets are so these can be removed at whim whenever you decide to put something here we're still going to put silicone around here and around here now normally for this I'll buy the little hand tube and just because it makes a much thinner thread we had this thing opened up wider so but that's okay we'll just put a bead going around here just the faster you go the smaller the bead it makes so if you can if you can get your gun to go around there pretty fast you'll be fine so we're going to have to do a lot of wiping here to get it all off so I just push my finger right into that corner there work that silicone right around the edge then I come back with a wipe and I try not to let the wipe touch the base of the faucet because I want there to be plenty of silicone in there do the same thing with these two guys just a quick bead around it and then try not to get it on the middle itself you're always going to get a little bit on there but important thing is to get all the excess off first and you can come back and wipe it all down here's the inside of our brand-new cabinet of course these are not soft closed doors these are this is nothing normal cabinets i buyed this is what the homeowner had in here originally normally when I buy cabinets they have soft closed doors that go like this and it goes II and they gently closed see we got it all back together again how it looks like everything survived nicely here the operation was a complete success and the patient even survived and even the granite countertop with this challenging seam right here everything survived looks like it's brand new again here I'm sure at the beginning you thought this was probably a pretty scary maneuver how are we gonna pull this off but you can see everything does pretty well come apart if you're careful and use proper surgical techniques here now taking it out was the hard part that was about five and a half hours of work remember we had to spend about an hour assembling this cabinet cuz it came in a box then we had to spend about another hour so measuring and drilling all the holes there then we had to go to Home Depot because there was issues wrong with the outlet being wired wrong and we just decided let's replace everything we went and bought new valves and we went and bought a new faucet we reattached everything we siliconed everything and that's how you do it for us so anyway if you found this video useful hey we would appreciate it if you give us a thumbs up down below here and if this is your first time here and if you haven't subscribed to our channel yet make sure you click on that subscribe button down below and hit the little gray bell icon next to it that way you'll be notified every time we upload a new video because YouTube will not notify you unless you tell them to notify and then lastly make sure you check out these other videos that we have here coming up on the end screen here the other videos that are useful and related to this that you'll want to see so that's it for this one folks we'll see next one [Music]

Channel: jeffostroff

Views: 94,215

Keywords: remove kitchen sink, remove kitchen cabinets, remove kitchen cabinets without damage, pull out kitchen cabinets, extract kitchen cabinet, kitchen cabinet makeover, kitchen cabinet removal, kitchen cabinet removal and installation, kitchen cabinet removal tips, kitchen cabinet removal service, diy kitchen cabinet removal, kitchen cabinet diy, kitchen base cabinet installation, kitchen sink cabinet, kitchen sink cabinet diy, diy kitchen sink cabinet, jeff ostroff, kitchen sink

Id: 7YFJPIgcmx8

Length: 36min 41sec (2201 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020