My neighbor and I both have the single and both have been installed for about 7 years, both as overmount(drop-in) and both installed by two different people in two different ways. My neighbor has a garbage disposal and is installed with undermounted wood supports in standard, framed cabinets. We have no garage disposal and are installed in the older style ikea cabinets with the ikea metal supports. My neighbor drilled out the other two holes (total of three) for sink accessories, we just used the original single hole. Barkeepers friend is your friend for stains. Make a paste in the sink, lightly scrub all over, leave it for a while - anywhere from a few minutes to overnight and rinse away for a blinding white sink. I only do this about 3-6 months. I watched my neighbors' pet over the holidays and cleaned their kitchen for a surprise gift and some physical therapy for me. Their sink became shiney white with the same treatment. We have a few small chips, no cracks. My neighbor has no cracks and quite a lot of chips. I would say my neighbor is more a "normal user" with kids and we're a freshly elderly couple. Both of us have ikea wood counters with issues around the sink - even thought the counters are finished in two different ways and use different sealants. We have issues with a splashy faucet that they don't have but both seem to have issues with water piling up at the mounting.

I bought a Whitehaus fireclay sink from Bluebath.com (an ebay storefront, if you search Whitehaus on ebay you'll find it). It is 35" wide outside dimensions with an 8" bowl (I have the garburetor on this side) and a 24" bowl. I paid under $600 for it. I love it, but must say I have had it installed less than a week. Well after I bought it I read of some instances (one or two) on GW of people who had problems with cracking in Whitehaus sinks, perhaps due to thermal shock. I haven't experienced that, and I have an insta-hot on this sink which pours near boiling water on to it. Let's hope I never do. Prior to buying the sink, I had read a lot of rave reviews here for it. Blue Bath was fast and courteous and (at the time I ordered at least, last summer) had a 100% feedback rating on ebay. I can fit my largest pans fully in the large bowl, and with my gooseneck faucet, I can put my kitchen trash bin in upright to rinse it out. Fabulous. Also, in the past few days I have not been precious with using it, and notice no dings or scratches (so far). Also, FWIW, I went with fireclay not just for its looks but in part b/c my friends in New Orleans who had fireclay sinks in their homes there had their fireclay sinks survive Katrina even when the rest of their kitchens/homes had to be gutted.

I don't see any reason to spend an extra $400 unless you have a really compelling reason to prefer the Blanco. The one reason I can see is what you said about the IKEA domsjo being divided. Their single bowl is only 25" and their double bowl is two bowls of 18.5" each. So if you honestly use huge things like cookie sheets a lot, like Amber, or other over-sized items, then you might be unhappy with an IKEA. For me, the 25" single bowl Domsjo will meet 97% of my needs, and that's close enough. I can use the $400 difference elsewhere in my kitchen. So I think you should think about what you cook/bake on a regular basis, and make your decision based on that. Hope this helps! :-)

I would certainly hope that for twice the price it would be at least twice as nice! Believe me if I could buy the best I would, right now we're not in a place where there is going to be new savings for awhile. We just bought an old house that is needing a lot of work. I'm on a tight budget for the kitchen and it's really the main "luxury" work we're doing, since the kitchen is functional and I don't technically need an island. I just really want a dishwasher and more counter space! I need to stick with a 20"-24" sink due to space constraints and I need to keep the cost of the sink around $200ish. I wasn't really considering the farmhouse style sink for the island until I saw the small Domsjo. Whenever we can replace the main countertop on the back wall I will change out that sink and probably will go with a large apron front sink since I love them and they fit the style of the house. I will definitely save to get an awesome sink for that, but that is ways down the road right now, the current countertop and sink are in fine shape and there are lots of other priorities. This does really have me thinking this may not be the way to go through, if there is that much concern about this sink. Already I was worried about if there were problems that it would be difficult to replace since another of the same would probably be the only option, even that small Whitehaven seems to be smaller than the Domjso so it wouldn't be possible to easily trade up later. A more traditional drop in would be easier to replace if needed without having to replace the whole countertop. Ha, I don't want to plan for things to fail but don't want to get myself into a corner where the only fix is an all new everything!