Can the cabinet under the sink be replaced without redoing the kitchen?
Usually, yes. A sink base is one box, and a cabinetmaker can rebuild its floor or build a new box to the old one’s exact sizes while every other cabinet stays where it is. That one-cabinet job is ordinary cabinet repair in Owensboro.
The cabinetmakers this site connects you with do the cabinet work. A plumber is a separate trade and comes in twice, once to disconnect the sink and once to hook it back up, and a stone top may bring its fabricator back.
For a sense of scale, the materials for one plywood box run $110 - $260, with no door, no finish and none of the shop’s time. That is the floor under a rebuilt sink base, not the price of one. The finished cabinet, set and fastened to its neighbors, costs more than the bare box, and the countertop work and the plumber are separate lines on top of it.
Why is the sink base the first cabinet to go?
It is the only cabinet in a kitchen that holds plumbing. The drain trap, both supply lines, the dishwasher’s drain hose and the disposal all live inside it, and any one of them can drip for months behind a closed door. The water runs down to the cabinet floor and sits there, out of sight, under the dish soap and the trash bags.
Most people find it the same way. They reach for something at the back and the floor gives a little under their hand, or a ring of swelling shows up exactly where the cleaning caddy has always stood, right under the trap.
What that water does next depends on when the kitchen was built. Owensboro has two kinds of kitchen, and the sink base fails differently in each.
The brick ranches in Wesleyan Heights, Hillcrest and Seven Hills mostly kept their 1960s-70s cabinets, built on site out of oak and birch, and those boxes usually have plywood or solid-wood floors. A plywood floor that has been wet for a long time goes dark, maybe lifts a ply at the front edge, and mostly keeps its shape.
The 1990s builder kitchens in the newer subdivisions more often came with particleboard boxes. Particleboard drinks water instead of shedding it. The floor swells at the edges and around any hole, goes soft enough to dent with a thumb, and does not dry back flat. In those kitchens the side panels down near the toe kick have usually taken water too.
Is a new floor in the old box ever enough?
Yes, when the water stopped at the floor. If the sides, the back and the face frame are still firm and square, a shop can cut out the ruined bottom and lay a new plywood floor in on cleats, inside the cabinet you already have. The box stays put, the countertop never moves, and the doors go back on their own hinges.
Before a cabinetmaker agrees to a floor-only repair, he looks at a few things.
The lowest part of the face frame and the toe kick under it come first. If the stain has gone up into the frame or the kick has swollen away from the box, the water got further than the floor. Then the back panel, especially around the holes where the pipes come through the wall, where a slow leak tends to sit longest. Then whether the cabinet is still square: doors that close evenly and meet in the middle mean the box has not racked.
An older plywood sink base passes that look more often than not. A particleboard one rarely does, because by the time the floor is soft the sides usually are as well, and a new floor screwed into swollen sides has nothing solid to hold. A floor repair is billed as shop time at $65 - $110 an hour plus the plywood.
What happens to the countertop when the sink base comes out?
The countertop runs across the top of the sink base and onto the cabinets on either side, so the top decides how the old box gets out. A laminate top can often be unscrewed from below and lifted or propped. A stone top usually stays where it is while the old box is cut apart underneath it. The plumbing is disconnected either way.
| Countertop | How the old sink base usually comes out |
|---|---|
| Laminate | Screws from below come loose, the top lifts enough to clear the box or comes off in one piece, and the box slides out the front. A laminate top that took water at the sink cutout often gets replaced along with the cabinet. |
| Granite or quartz | The top stays put, supported, and the old box is cut out under it in pieces. The new box goes in from the front, sometimes in parts joined in place, and an undermount sink stays attached to the stone. |
| Tile on a wood deck | The deck is fastened to the box and the tile is grouted to the backsplash, so it rarely survives being lifted. Expect either a new top or a box built in place under the old one. |
In a 1970s ranch kitchen that still has its original laminate, the top is often the weaker part. The particleboard core around the sink cutout sees the same water the cabinet does, and a top that has swollen at the cutout will not sit flat on a new box. That is worth knowing before the shop builds anything, because a new top changes who comes to the house and when.
How does a new sink base match the cabinets on either side?
By the face-frame line first and the door second. A new box that is the right width but sits its frame a little proud of its neighbors, or rides on a taller toe kick, reads as a patch from across the room even with a perfect door on it. The shop measures the frames on both sides before it builds anything.
What gets matched, roughly in the order a cabinetmaker checks it at the measure:
- The width and height of the opening, so the countertop lands back where it sat.
- The width of the frame stiles and rails, and the reveal around each door, so the vertical lines carry straight through the run.
- The depth of the frame face, so the front sits flush with the cabinets beside it instead of a hair forward or back.
- The toe kick: its height and how far it is set back, which is the line you see at floor level from the kitchen doorway.
- Door style, then stain or paint.
The door is the part everyone worries about, and it is often the easier half. If the water never reached the doors, the old ones go back on the new box. If they did take water, a new door built to match is normal shop work, and replacing just the cabinet doors covers what a new door has to line up with.
Color is the last step. New oak or birch comes out of the shop lighter than wood that has been in a kitchen since the 1970s, so the finisher tones the new frame toward the old ones rather than finishing it like new lumber. On a 1990s builder kitchen the neighbors are usually a factory finish in standard widths, and the shop builds and sprays to those.
What has to be fixed before the new cabinet goes in?
The leak, first, and that belongs to a plumber. Then whatever the water did underneath the cabinet. A new box set over a drip that is still running, or over a soft patch of subfloor, is the next repair already started, so the order runs plumber, floor, cabinet, top, and the plumber again.
- A plumber finds and fixes the leak, then disconnects the sink, the disposal and the dishwasher’s drain and supply lines.
- The old box comes out, and the floor under it gets a look in daylight for the first time in years. Subfloor that flexes underfoot gets replaced before anything sits on it, and wet framing gets time to dry before it is covered again.
- The new floor or the new box goes in, leveled to the cabinets on either side and fastened to them and to the wall. Holes for the dishwasher lines are cut on site, where the old lines actually come through.
- The countertop goes back down, or the new one gets templated and set.
- The plumber reconnects everything and runs water while somebody watches the inside of the new cabinet.
The cabinet work in the middle is the shop’s. The first and last steps are not, and on a one-cabinet job it is worth knowing whether the shop coordinates the plumber or you do.
Does a rotted sink base mean the other cabinets are going too?
Not usually, but check the cabinet on the far side of the dishwasher. A dishwasher leak runs sideways along the floor and under the toe kick before it shows anywhere, so the box beside the dishwasher is the one most likely to share the damage. One wet cabinet is a repair. Water that traveled the length of the run makes the job bigger than one box.
Pull the dishwasher’s kick plate and shine a light along the floor under it. A dark line or a warped edge running toward the next cabinet means that box gets opened too. In the older site-built kitchens the damage usually stops at the sink base and its neighbor, and the rest of the run is fine.
The builder kitchens are where one bad box can point at the others. If the sink base swelled, the cabinets next to it are the same particleboard from the same order, and a kitchen with a few soft boxes has outgrown a one-cabinet repair. That call depends on whether the rest of the boxes are worth refacing, and the refacing page has the test that answers it. If they are not, what new custom cabinets cost in Owensboro is laid out by the linear foot and by kitchen shape.