Hey everyone!

I’m so excited because I finally get to share a project we worked on. The best part about this project is that it is very easy to do and it will improve the look of your sink cabinet drastically.

Now if you are a first-time homebuyer or an investor, don’t run away if you see this type of mess right here.

Here is a close-up.

As you can see, this cabinet experienced some water damage over the years. The good news is that currently no leaks are detected, but the base of the cabinet is warped. Instinctively, the first thought is to replace the whole cabinet. But what if it would be too difficult to tackle? I say this because that would mean I would have to tear out the countertops and find a base cabinet with this exact dimension. That would be too much work and would require a full kitchen gut job.

So instead, we looked into how we can fix the cabinet. At first, we were going to clean the cabinet really well and paint with an oil-based or latex paint. But that wouldn’t quite solve the issue of waterproofing the sink.

We later decided to just add pressure-treated wood boards. When we did so, I was not satisfied with how it looked. I was also dreading the fact that I would have to sand and paint that wood to alleviate the grain showing when I painted it. With that in mind, it was time to take a trip to the home improvement store.

As I looked through the aisles, I found waterproof flexible boards and sheets made with PVC material. PVC, which stands for polyvinyl chloride is a plastic material. Builders are starting to incorporate PVC materials in their projects, especially outdoor projects due to the fact that this material is moisture, rot, and critter resistant. It lasts longer than wood products. So I grabbed a 2×4′ PVC white sheet with 1/4 thickness. Oh, did I mentioned that they can be painted any color as well? Please note: This item is something that one can get in-store, I was not able to locate the item on-line.

Since we already had wood pieces in the sink, I took those out and used it as a template to cut the PVC board to size. I used a standard jigsaw, but a box cutter would have easily sufficed. The board was cut into two pieces since I could not fit one large piece into the cabinet doors. Please excuse my rough cuts, I’m glad this project is a forgiving type for my not so handy skills.

I then put the boards under the sink to dry fit it. Since I did not cut the boards so straight so I had to make some modifications and slice some pieces off to make a better fit.

As you can see, the difference was seen immediately. I then proceeded to glue the board down with construction adhesive and nail it down with a nail gun.

The final step was caulking around the seams and in all areas susceptible to water.

Under the cabinet now looks so good and all it cost was $16 bucks for the PVC sheet. We did not paint the board because we didn’t feel it was necessary due to the cabinet being white.

So let’s look at the before and after:

So for $16, we were able to transform a damaged and disgusting sink cabinet base and give it new life in a matter of 30 minutes. The best part is if there is ever a future leak, we wouldn’t have to worry about it warping.

Just in case you need one, here is a list of materials we used:

2×4′ PVC sheet

jigsaw

nail gun

bathroom caulk

So there you have it. An easy DIY project that anyone can do. I hope if you face anything like this, you don’t run away from it. Instead, fix it in 3 easy steps.

Until next time!