Kitchen Decision #2: Sinks

To dry or to drip-dry–that is the question I was faced with when deciding what sink to get for our new-to-us kitchen.  You see, we were replacing this gargantuan:

A double stainless-steel sink that is 43″ wide and 16″ long!  Trust me, that is huge in the world of sinks.  So why are we replacing it?  Well, for a few reasons:

1. It’s not very deep (the left side is only 7″ deep and the right is only 4″);
2. It’s a drop-in sink, and with the new counter tops coming (more on those here), I want an undermount sink for that seamless look;
3. We don’t actually use two sinks–the large one on the right basically has turned into a drying rack for us, and we’ve never actually used it as a sink; and
4. The garbage disposal (which is broken anyways) is on the right sink, which is a further aggravation since it would be much more appreciated on the left sink.

 

On the cheaper end of things, that’s the Boholmen sink from Ikea at ~$150.  Ikea actually had a few options (seen here), but all were drop-in sinks.  So I pretty quickly ruled those out.

And the last one I could find was the Oliveri 882-U sold at Amazon for ~$700.  This one was at least an undermount, but I wasn’t digging the curves.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m kind of into the more streamlined, modern look of things.

So my quest for an integrated drainboard seemed to have failed.  BUT, then I saw this inspiration image from here:

And hallelujah!  Problem solved, right?  We’ll just get our counter top fabricators to carve in a drainboard.  Wrong.  Apparently none of the 6+ countertop places I went to have ever seen or done anything like that.  I love western NY and all, but come on!  Open a design mag once in a while, right?  Oh well.  In the end, I decided we could probably just get something like this to hang on our sink:

Yep, a stainless steel drain basket for less than $20 (from here).  Nothing like going the cheap, practical route when the high-end stuff fails ya’, huh?  And, that meant that we could get an even bigger sink to work with since we wouldn’t have to worry about the footprint including a drainboard–you see, I want a gargantuan sink.  I want our baby to bathe in it, I want our monster pots and pans to fit in it, and I want it to be a statement piece.

I’ll spare you the details of the rest of my quest, but maybe just some pictures (all of them are linked to more details on each):

Oh, but before we get to the pictures–one more thing.  I wanted an offset drain to one side–that way, when we have the rack in, it’s not covering up the drain.  And, from all my research, it sounds like a large, single sink with an offset corner drain was just the best overall choice.  Again, maybe not best for everyone, but best for us, and well–this blog is about us, not everyone.

That last one was definitely my favorite btw.  Of course, the $900 price tag wasn’t thrilling me.

In the end, we decided on the Blanco Super Single Bowl Kitchen Sink in Metallic Grey:

Why this one?  Well, allow me a few words:

1. It can be mounted either as a drop-in or as an undermount (obviously we’re going to mount it as an undermount);
2. It’s made from a granite composite, and all of the reviews were great–it doesn’t scratch, wears well, and doesn’t have that tinny sound that stainless can sometimes have when you drop stuff in it;
3. The drain was offset to the right corner;
4. The sink was BIG–30.5″ x 16″ with a depth of 9.5″ (which would really be over 10″ since it was going to be undermounted); and
5. The price was right–while most of the other sinks were $500+, I found this Blanco online for only $389.35 (from faucetdirect.com).  Of course, I didn’t stop there.  I also used eBates and Retailmenot.com (more on those sites here) to save an additional $26.87, so my sink only ended up costing me $362.48!  Not bad considering that the local Lowe’s was charging $500+ for the exact same sink!

And guess what–it just arrived and it’s beautiful!

Okay, so it has some Styrofoam all over it, but other than that it looks amazing.  And just to give you some scale of how big it is–here it is with a regular carry-on suitcase inside of it:

And with room to spare!!!  Oh happy day.  And even with being that big, it’s still going to take up a smaller footprint than our old sink, but boy oh boy is it going to be so much more functional!  Can you tell I’m excited?!?!

So what do you think?  Do you like the direction we’re going?  Or totally hate it?  Up next–faucets!  I know, you’re riveted I’m sure.