We are doing an 88 inch double vanity with towers (the towers are 14" wide and 9" deep). Our two oval undermount sinks are the Kohler Verticyl 17 x 14 which is the same size as the mid-size Caxton. I think that should be enough elbow room both between the sinks and on the outer ends. By the way, has anyone used any of the Verticyl sinks, either oval, round or rectangle? They are straight-sided and flat-bottomed. I worry a bit about how well the water will drain but they are so sharp looking......

I got a very deep, undermount Blanco sink (10 inches, but I use the grid, but my granite is an inch, so it cancels out to 10 inches) which I'm very happy with. But, like many things, there are trade offs. It is harder on my back to wash dishes in it. With any deep sink it's important to get a faucet with a long reach so the water is near you and you're not both bending down into the deep sink while also bending forward to reach the water. But (I'm embarrassed to write this, but here goes) I don't spend that much time washing dishes. I use the dishwasher for most things and just rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher without even setting them down into the sink. The occassional scrubbing a pot just isn't that big a deal. On the other hand, it's so nice when I'm not ready to deal with the dishes that there's a nice roomy sink to put everything in, and they're sort of hidden in there - I don't have this huge pile of dirty dishes for my guests and me to look at. I would definitely get the big, deep sink again. I'm 5' 3" and in my sixties.

We love our 30" wide sink (Julien). 97% of the time it is large enough for our needs. Once in a blue moon I kind of wish it was wider, mostly when I need to shove stuff off to one side of the sink to wash something that is somewhat large (and I don't want to wash the other stuff first). Otherwise it's great. Don't think I'd want to go any smaller. I can wash my 36" Wolf range's oven racks in it.

Wow -- thank you for the feedback! It's helpful to hear al sides of the story. Caligirl's photo (first one of the second group, all white with the black daisy) is the one I actually sent to my contractor awhile back to show him what I wanted. From what I have read, it seems that hex tile was fairly common for counters during the 20s (if you actually had counters), while natural stone was not as common as people think (too costly to get big slabs, which is why people had small marble pastry slabs on baking tables), and actually wood and linoleum would have been pretty common, too. I found a lot of pictures of hex tile kitchen counters, too. The first is one of my favorites: My built-in cabinets are original to the house, and I love them. The countertop on those was originally wood (although it currently has circa 1980s beige tile over it, which will be going at some point). My guess is that trends for built-ins vs. freestanding cabinets varied regionally because there are a lot of kitchens around here with cabinets very similar to mine (in fact, I salvaged the ones I will be using in my renovation from a friend who actually ripped hers out! I tried to talk her out of it.) Here are my original cabinets: And here is the counter space in between the sink and stove on the opposite wall that will house the new (hex?) tile. It is only a few square feet, so I think the scale of tile will be important. Because I have so little of it, this counter gets a lot of use and gets a lot of hot pans from the oven put on it.