Water and a Caulked Sink

One night last year, I realized that water was seeping into the lower cabinet from the sink above. I found this out by accident. I was washing dishes and needed to grab something from underneath the sink, when I grabbed it, it felt damp and I could see that the area around it was also wet.

Luckily, after pulling out everything from under the sink, I saw that the water was not coming from the pipe and seemed to be in only one spot. Then I looked at the rim of the sink and the counter top. There was no caulk! There was nothing to prevent water from seeping down into the cabinet when I sloshed it over the side in washing dishes. Then I procrastinated…instead of correcting the problem, I vowed to be much more careful when I washed dishes! That idea didn't make sense,but I followed through with it anyway.

And then the ants came, in a previous post, High Hopes, I told how I got rid of that problem. But water seepage can create a whole host of problems, including insects (ants and others), mold, and general deterioration. So, I took pictures of the sink with my trusty digital camera and headed to the big box home improvement store. There, I showed them my pictures and explained that the counter top was wood with some type of polyurethane coating. It was suggested that I use clear adhesive caulk.

It worked! The sink is now caulked, perhaps not beautifully nor expertly, but no water is seeping into the cabinet below.