The “correct” way, or most correct way I guess, is to have a cabinet in the corner that is diagonal, at 45 degrees relative to the left and right cabinet runs. Example:
You can buy premade angle cabinets that are designed for this, or you can just set a normal sink base cabinet at 45 degrees and mess around with fillers and so forth to space it out from the other two runs and hopefully ensure that there is sufficient clearance to open the doors and drawers on both it and the cabinets left and right of it. The disadvantage of this is it limits you to a surprisingly narrow sink, since it can’t be much if any wider than the face of the cabinet. And if you make the cabinet wider, you also have to bring it out into the room more and more as well, encroaching on your floor space. Normally people want to use a corner sink because they’re short on square footage anyway, so this is not ideal. Also, you inevitably wind up with a huge dead space behind the sink (that’s hard to reach, because there’s a sink and faucet in the way) and the further you bring out the face of the sink base cabinet the worse this gets.
The other way is to just have a dead or blind corner with a typical 90 degree transition in it, and just plonk the sink diagonally in the dead space. Example:
(This isn’t actually quite that as installed in a kitchen, but my low effort Google search did not turn up a great picture of this.) This has all the width limitation problems as the strategy above, but also forces you to stand in this stupid pie-wedge space with a hard corner in it, with the countertop edge digging into and the cabinet knobs hooking your belt loops all the time. It’s super annoying. In order to get a decently sized sink in here people often wind up pushing it back, and you’ll learn quickly that working in a sink that’s super far away is also really fuckin’ annoying.
Plan C which is now becoming popular is what OP posted, a double sink that’s got the 90 degree corner built into it. This is the worst of both worlds, if you ask me, because you still have to stand in a pie wedge plus the sink(s) you get are super narrow, and your functional setup becomes fraught with additional peril because idiots and/or children can activate the faucet with it aimed at neither sink, soaking your countertop, cabinets, and floor.
That makes a lot of sense. I was trying to work out why a sink immediately next to a corner was bad, but now I know what you mean.
I guess it’s a bad solution to trying to work around the problem of kitchen real estate, the same way trying to use for cabinet in the corner unit for anything is almost always a bad time.
The main reason it’s a bad idea is that 99% of the time the corner is where the seam is for the laminate skin, which is the weakest point in the counter and most likely to form gaps in the counter that water can get into and start to rot the plywood below. If you have granite I guess it would be less of a concern but I’m not familiar with the layout of those counters.
There are a couple of ways people do this.
The “correct” way, or most correct way I guess, is to have a cabinet in the corner that is diagonal, at 45 degrees relative to the left and right cabinet runs. Example:
You can buy premade angle cabinets that are designed for this, or you can just set a normal sink base cabinet at 45 degrees and mess around with fillers and so forth to space it out from the other two runs and hopefully ensure that there is sufficient clearance to open the doors and drawers on both it and the cabinets left and right of it. The disadvantage of this is it limits you to a surprisingly narrow sink, since it can’t be much if any wider than the face of the cabinet. And if you make the cabinet wider, you also have to bring it out into the room more and more as well, encroaching on your floor space. Normally people want to use a corner sink because they’re short on square footage anyway, so this is not ideal. Also, you inevitably wind up with a huge dead space behind the sink (that’s hard to reach, because there’s a sink and faucet in the way) and the further you bring out the face of the sink base cabinet the worse this gets.
The other way is to just have a dead or blind corner with a typical 90 degree transition in it, and just plonk the sink diagonally in the dead space. Example:
(This isn’t actually quite that as installed in a kitchen, but my low effort Google search did not turn up a great picture of this.) This has all the width limitation problems as the strategy above, but also forces you to stand in this stupid pie-wedge space with a hard corner in it, with the countertop edge digging into and the cabinet knobs hooking your belt loops all the time. It’s super annoying. In order to get a decently sized sink in here people often wind up pushing it back, and you’ll learn quickly that working in a sink that’s super far away is also really fuckin’ annoying.
Plan C which is now becoming popular is what OP posted, a double sink that’s got the 90 degree corner built into it. This is the worst of both worlds, if you ask me, because you still have to stand in a pie wedge plus the sink(s) you get are super narrow, and your functional setup becomes fraught with additional peril because idiots and/or children can activate the faucet with it aimed at neither sink, soaking your countertop, cabinets, and floor.
Wow, thanks for the reply!
That makes a lot of sense. I was trying to work out why a sink immediately next to a corner was bad, but now I know what you mean.
I guess it’s a bad solution to trying to work around the problem of kitchen real estate, the same way trying to use for cabinet in the corner unit for anything is almost always a bad time.
The main reason it’s a bad idea is that 99% of the time the corner is where the seam is for the laminate skin, which is the weakest point in the counter and most likely to form gaps in the counter that water can get into and start to rot the plywood below. If you have granite I guess it would be less of a concern but I’m not familiar with the layout of those counters.