morton, I also expect to see wear and patina over time with my ss sink. At the moment, I think I'm in "new car" mode - I want to preserve the shiny newness of everything for as long as possible! DH hasn't seen me clean so much in all the time we've been married :-) Having said that, I have a scratch on the cooktop and an indelible mark on our wood island top already - no biggie. We wanted to choose things that would appear to be appropriate for our old house and old houses have patina. Our old kitchen had a ss sink that was at least 20 yrs old and I certainly didn't baby it the way I'm doing with this one. Looked just fine. I guess it goes back to the linen pants analogy that's often used to determine whether someone would love soapstone or not: if the wrinkles bother you, it may not be for you. And we have soapstone too so I guess you know we don't mind a ding or two! Eliz

Go with the stainless grid. We have both kinds of grids (2 sinks); I would love to have a plain stainless steel grid instead of the coated one, but it's not available. The grid that is coated already has a spot where rust is showing, so it's obviously not stainless steel underneath. A hot pan will definitely melt the coating.

My Shaws sink is 10 years old. I had the white grid for about 8 years. Some of the white material starting coming off and it starting rusting in those spots. It did show discoloration. I used bleach about once a month (very dilute) in the sink and that cleaned it up pretty well. I just recently felt it was time to replace the grid and got a new SS one from Amazon. I thought the SS would solve all of the problems. It still gets "gunky" at the intersections. A blackish gunk. So it has to be cleaned frequently as well. The alternative is no grid which is not a good alternative. I didn't have a grid for the first couple years and the bottom of the sink got a few chips. White looks better imho. As far as wear and care...its six of one and half dozen of another.

I don't have a lot of stainless other than the backsplash and the the top trim on my range. I just use a damp microfiber cloth we buy by the multi packs at Harbor Freight. If it gets heavier splatter or grease a little rubbing alcohol does the trick. In fact when we first got our backsplash it had some shipping tape residue marks along with other streaky marks and DH simply sprayed it with alcohol and used a greenie scrubber with the grain before mounting it.. That how the shops that work stainless do it so what works for them also works at home. No need for special products marketed for stainless. Anything can etch stainless, even water, so you want to avoid drips and rivulets. Stainless dishwashers and fridges are well known to have problems with water etching and even rust spots due to condensation.