We have the Dickinson and have been very happy with it. But, Johnliu really did say it best. After drooling over the Rohl I realized I didn't want to shred my nerves over a sink or anything else anymore. I've seen 30 year old cast iron sinks that lived in households with 5 kids and they looked fine. DH all by himself can be the equivalent of 5 kids in the kitchen so I figured I was okay with the Dickinson. Bottom line, I guess, is "know thyself" (as well as the habits of others who will use the sink) and choose accordingly.

The Stanton Fireclay farmhouse sink 30" from Signature Hardware has that frame around it and it sells for $599. It is on this page of sinks, good hunting! Here is a link that might be useful: Stanton Fireclay Framed Firehouse sink 30

70/30 and 60/40 are almost worse than 50/50. I dunno... After only having 50/50 my whole life (all 36 years of it, lol), I'm quite impressed by my experimental* 70/30. :-D The disposal is in the smaller section (kind of a pain), but the smaller section is closer to the stove, so it's not too bad. My colander perfectly spans the small section, so when I'm draining pasta, nothing touches the bottom of the sink. Which is really nice. I hand wash very few things, but I don't fill the sink up to do it (soapy sponge and slowly running water do the trick for me). All of that said, my dreams are filled with copper single basin sinks, so that I only have one disposal and one drain to clean. :-) [*experimental -- trying it out in the tract house we just had built, because I wanted to convince the husband that there's more to life than 50/50, and the builder wanted far too much for the single basin upgrade; the ultimate goal is to do single basin in the custom house.]

FWIW I found a shot that gives a good idea of what a living patina sink looks like - it's virtually maintenance free. I did NOT wanted a hammered bottom on my sink because I thought it would be problematic for cleaning and in when looking at sinks, most of the hammered sinks were of poor quality and looked artificial and obnoxious. I did opt for a hammered front because I thought the bottom of my sink and the front would be exposed to different things and the hammered front would better disguise any discrepancy. Also the way in which Havens actually "hammers" the apron is very subtle and not the busy obnoxious look that most of them have. I do have a relatively inexpensive hammered copper sink in my guest bath because I am not concerned about maintenance in that room since it is used almost never :-). It is from Premiere Copper which is a great source for copper stuff. They supplied my copper hood as well as copper accent tiles. They also did a custom copper medallion - my designer sketched it out using an Art Nouveau statue of a crane that I have and we both love. I also have a copper ceiling. My old kitchen had the standard dropped plastic sheets covering fluorescent tubes and my new lighting now has lots of canned lights - under cabinet task lights. However, I have structural soffits so my designer used the higher space in the middle to create a dramatic coved copper tiled ceiling with uplighting. Here's a pretty good shot of the sink when it was installed. It pretty much still looks like this with some shiny patches that fairly quickly change. Copper medallion with crane and copper hood Front of my apron sink which has the very subtle hammered treatment Terrible photo of the coved ceiling :-)