I absolutely lurve mine, bridgetmalone! And have already decided I would do it again should we ever do another kitchen reno (although after this one, it is highly unlikely hah!). That said, if I was trying to stay authentic I think I would not choose stainless. At least to my eye I agree with hollysprings that it gives a more transitional/modern look. However, unless you are doing a historical renovation, aren't we all doing a somewhat transitional/modern take on vintage design when choosing an apron front in the first place. As I type this I realize I am being of no help to you in deciding haha! Good luck!

I recently purchased a 30" Vigo stainless apron front sink. I am now looking for a stainless sink grid. Has anyone found one that fits? Poorowner, I noticed in your pictures that you had a sink grid in your 36" sink. Where did you purchase it? Thanks

We recently got our Shaw's and measured it as we are trying to build the cabinet. The sink is supposed to be 10 inches deep but it is fractionally deeper in the center and tapers to the edges -- it is loaf shaped rather than cleanly rectangular and ever so slightly deeper on one side than the other. My husband had already made the enclosure thinking 10 inches and now he is taking it apart to shave off a bit to make adequate space for the deepest point in the sink. We were all warned to wait for the sink . . . .

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 :-)