Hi all,

I was kind of surprised at the amount of interest that the undermount IKEA Domsjo sink generated in my thread on my new kitchen. It got me to thinking there must be a lot more out there that have considered this particular hack, so I figured I'd try and get some more photos, and give the topic its own thread!

I should say at the outset that, while I love IKEA (obviously!) I think they only got it 80% right on this sink, and the 20% wrong is that dumb-looking (and absurdly wide) back ledge, and the unnecessarily thick side ledges. Honestly, if I couldn't have figured out a way to undermount this sink, I wouldn't have bought it-- it's really clunky as they show it installed. Plus that thick side ledge crumb catcher would have driven me insane.

So. . . those disclosures aside, we just undermounted the Domsjo essentially just like we would have any other undermount installation. There are two ways to undermount a sink, with or without a drip rail, and they are COMPLETELY different. If you're going to do an undermount, be sure you're crystal clear on the difference, and which one you want to do.

The Domsjo single bowl is a 24" sink, and we did a non-drip rail installation, so to undermount it, we used a 30" cabinet.

The sink is designed to sit on two metal rails (they come with the sink) that span the width of the cabinet, and screw into the sides. Those rails are too short for a 30" cabinet, so we just reused a spare cabinet part (a plain 2 x 4 would work equally well) and placed it and screwed it exactly like we would have with the metal.

If you look at the top left corner of this photo, you can see the sink resting on the support:

The only tricky part is measuring precisely, to make sure that you place the supports at the right height, so that the top of the sink is exactly level with the top of the cabinet.

Once the sink is sitting level with the top of the cabinet, the counter top goes on, and sits on top of the sink and the cabinet. We just ran a bead of clear caulk along the sink/counter seam:

Don't forget to drill the hole for the faucet! That part's easy, though. Because there's a faucet hole on the back deck of the sink, all you have to do is trace it on to the underside of your countertop, and cut it out. The sink is drilled for a single hole mount. If you have your heart set on another style, you'll have to use a diamond hole saw and drill additional holes in the sink deck and countertop.

Trimming the sink out was a touch fussy, but the beauty of IKEA is that you can buy doors and drawerfronts seperately, so we could just mix and match, keep what worked, and return what didn't. Throughout our project, we basically treated our IKEA as a glorified hardware store-- it was a monster collection of finished wood, hardware and parts at our disposal, and we just picked out and played with whatever looked like it might work.

To do the apron around the sink, we used a 30" wide drawerfront (IKEA's deep drawer front-- about 12" high). In this photo, you can actually see that the cut drawerfront around the sink, and the drawerfront in the bottom stack under the microwave are identical:

We traced the outline of the front of the sink onto the drawerfront, and cut it with a jigsaw. Finish nailed it into place, then installed the airswitch for the disposal:

Because we dropped the height of the sink, none of the standard IKEA doors fit exactly, but the 18" set was really close, so we used those, and just added a small filler strip (maybe 3/4 inch?) above them:

Undermounting the sink only drops it by the height of the countertop (usually 1 1/2 inches), so not much changes with the interior space. There is definitely room for a pullout in there, or room for a disposal (we have one):

If anyone has any more questions about the sink install, I'm happy to answer what I can!