February 24-March 2, 2005

cover story

Basic In Sink

Stocking her cabinet: Shelley Spector shows off her cabinet-turned-sink. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Shelley Spector's Sink In A Cabinet

by Doron Taussig

When Shelley Spector first bought her South Philadelphia house, the interior was hideous. It had been occupied, she recalls, by an "old Italian woman" who liked her space dark and her air stuffy. The third-floor bathroom was particularly gruesome: It featured a rusty sink top with a cotton-candy pink cabinet underneath. But Spector, who runs Spector Gallery on Bainbridge Street, wouldn't stand for an ugly bathroom. Using an old cabinet she found in her home and some basic tools, she replaced the pink monster with the structure you see at left.

Sinks are very utilitarian items, so sink-makers don't always invest a lot of energy into their products' appearance. But you're not stuck with the monstrosity in your bathroom. All you need to spruce things up is a bureau or chest of drawers, a "vanity top" (the sink bowl and surrounding flat surface) and the sink fixture itself (the spigot and the knobs). That, plus some energy. "When I bought the house, I was all about [making improvements] Every Tuesday night, I had home improvement night," she says. "Now that I'm living here, changing a light bulb is more than I can handle."

Make Your Own Sink In A Cabinet

You'll need:

• • Jigsaw, screwdriver or drill, screws, pipe wrench
• • An old cabinet
• • Vanity sink top

What you do:

1. Find your pieces. Spector found her cabinet in the basement and her vanity top on the second-floor bathroom sink; you can pick up a cabinet at a yard sale or thrift store and a vanity top at a Home Depot or a Lowe's. Measure them with a tape measure. The vanity top should be a little wider than the cabinet, but only by a few inches.
2. Take the old sink out. First, turn off the water. Then, unscrew the sink fixture and disconnect the drain pipes. Lift and remove the cabinet or stand from the floor or wall, whatever it's attached to. You'll be left with a hole in the wall and pipes, either coming out of the wall or the floor.
3. Remove the top and back from your cabinet. If you can, unscrew the pieces; if not, saw them off with a jigsaw. ("I saved that wood and used it for something else," Spector says.)
4. If the cabinet has drawers, remove them and take the front faces off. Then, screw the front faces of the drawers back onto the cabinet (screw from the inside).
5. If your plumbing comes out of the wall, just slide the cabinet up against the wall. If it comes out of the floor, you'll need to take a jigsaw and saw a piece out of the bottom of the cabinet that the plumbing will fit through.
6. Set the vanity top onto the cabinet and reattach the sink fixture to the plumbing. You won't need to seal it — the plumbing will hold the top in place.