how to achieve a farmhouse sink

In our recent inspiration gallery Mum Little loves x kaboodle kitchen we talk to homeowner Hayley Little about how she transformed her home with kaboodle.

Farmhouse sinks are certainly having a moment, adding character and charm to kitchen spaces, our audience is loving this look. We are often asked how to create a farmhouse sink with kaboodle products, so we have asked Hayley how she went about this in her kitchen.

The first thing you need to do is select your sink! They come in so many sizes and you will need to know the width and depth of your sink before you work out the best components to use. We used a Turner Hastings NOVI Double Butlers Sink. It is 850mm wide and 254mm high. The base cabinets are 720mm high which means we had 466mm left for the height of the cabinet.

There are a few options when it comes to fitting a farmhouse or butlers sink using kaboodle cabinets. We’ve seen people successfully use rangehood cabinets, the 450mm 1door and 1 drawer cabinet or sets of drawers by removing the top drawer, however we decided to use the 900mm slimline cabinet as our sink is particularly deep.

We were worried about accessing the contents of the cabinets due to the way the slimline cabinets open with the gas strut lift system therefore we decided to install it upside down. Now the door opens down instead and works perfectly!

After installing the cabinet, we built a frame from 90mm x 35mm structural pine to go around the slimline cabinet. It extended across the top of the cabinet and down the back of the cabinet. This is important to give the sink adequate support. Make sure you build your frame to allow for the taps and waste holes, you don’t want to cut through your frame later.

We then added a piece of structural waterproof 12mm plywood on top of the frame to evenly distribute the sink weight. We used a hole saw to cut the plumbing holes. The frame height should be calculated to bring the sink up to the bench height.

The 900mm slimline cabinet is 360mm high which means the sink will fit without having to cut down or adjust the cabinet. It leaves 50mm in the width and 106mm in the height to make up around the sink. You can use filler pieces or kickboard to fill the space similar to how you fill the extra space between your cabinets and the wall.

We used a filler panel down the sides, but we decided we wanted to create a little design moment under the sink so we added a small slab of marble. The sink appears to be sitting on the marble, but the marble only goes about 150mm under the sink and is just there for aesthetics. The rest of the height is filled in with some leftover kickboard, cut down to size.

This is not a complicated project; it is just a little fiddly. My best tip would be to get a piece of paper and draw your plan with all your measurements. This helps you to really understand all the components and make sure your measurements are correct.

There you have it, a complete guide to installing a farmhouse sink in your kitchen with kaboodle! You can read all about Hayley’s entire kitchen transformation here. For more inspiration and ideas, visit our design blog or follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

Please keep in mind that this is an advanced DIY hack not recommended for beginners.

The kaboodle product warranty will be void and does not apply to any alterations made to kaboodle product – so please keep this in mind when going about any product modifications.