The Offset U

I've found that I much prefer nice deep drawers for most kitchen stuff because you can pull them all the way forward to access items at the back of the cabinet. So as soon as I realized that having drawers under a sink was possible, I knew I wanted them. Otherwise the space under the sink seems to end up such a Hodge Podge of cleaning items and things that get lost. I saw the idea in Fine Homebuilding magazine (Fall/Winter 2004) while I was brainstorming the kitchen design.

The key here is that instead of the trap coming down directly off of the sink drain, the sink drain is connected to a 90 degree elbow and then a pipe leading to the back of the cabinet with a rather shallow slope. At the back of my IKEA cabinet there is a small gap between the back of the drawer and the back of the cabinet. The U trap can be positioned here so that it is parallel to the back of the cabinet before the piping takes another 90 degree turn to head out the back of the cabinet. This method can also be used to make a wheel chair friendly sink space.

I further expanded this theory by converting the standard IKEA cabinets in the sink area to have removable back walls. This did several things including allowing all of the plumbing including the dishwasher hoses to be behind the cabinet, moving the sink worktop inward into the room closer to the stove and fridge, thus tightening the natural work triangle, as well as creating a small space behind the cabinets to hide the water meter and instant-on water heater.

Unfortunately I fell in love with a big, double bowl, apron sink. The sink itself is much deeper than a traditional drop-in sink which is why I had to modify the top drawer to accommodate the pipes leading from the drains to the back of the cabinet. A shallower, single bowl sink would have made the conversion much less painful. Another point to note is that while the plumber who did the rough-in thought I was brilliant in my use of space, the plumber who came back for the finish work(same company, just different guy) thought I was completely nuts and couldn't imagine why anyone would want to do such a thing. He went so far as to intimate that it wasn't possible, that I was going to have drain flow problems, and that there was no way the dishwasher was going to be able to be hooked up. He completely didn't get it and he politely fought me on it. I had to explain things to him very slowly and it made me wish I'd called Ask This Old House to get Rich Trethewey to come sort it out. Finally he got it and it was as if a light bulb went on. So this installation is probably not for the faint of heart. It makes me think that I should forget this math stuff and become a plumber.