Quote:"4"is builder-grade cheap. Using a widespread is much more elegant." That is totally opinianated and coming from someone who really knows very little about upscale plumbing fixtures. I have a catalog here that lists extremely high end elegant fixtures and they show an entire line of early American & French Provincial faucetts that start out at $1800 and range up to $3900 and they are all 4". Now tell me that is contractor grade cheap. The bottom line, select the type of faucett that matches your decor and is within your budget range. There is no difference is function.

Couple of thoughts: You might be able to save quite a bit of money by replacing just the top (basin) part if the pedestal part is still OK. From what I've read, fireclay is more resistant to heat (like draining your boiling spaghetti water into the kitchen sink), but I don't know if it's any more resistant to damage from impact than the other types of sinks. I sympathize with you on the clutziness. We have a lot of that at our house, too!

I am now a bathroom authority (cuz we have too many LOL) and I have to say no peds in the family bathrooms! There's just too much of life you don't want to not be handy. Because we have peds in our master bath you would see that our window sill is full of all of the stuff you want handy like meds, toothbrushes/paste, deodorant, creams, etc. Same in DS's room. Very annoying to not have things at hand easily in reach and with a ped you don't have room to have them out but still looking nice. In my other house we have these wonderful spice drawers right at counter level where I keep all of the daily uglies (toothbrush etc) right at hand, but clean up just involves closing the drawers. I will incorporate that in some of these baths as well as it works wonderfully. But in guest rooms and a powder room, they work fine. I do provide a little dresser in each bath though for guests to have a space right next to the sink to put a few things out and leave them handy.

I too had a problem with a small powder room with a pedestal sink, the solution i found was buying something compact,elegant and something which doesn’t look like a storage space design wise.Toilet caddies could be a choice, since they come reasonably cheap with ,ample amount of storage and could get our job done in our budget. I bought myself a compact freshener designed one with white matte finish from Better Living back in my city Vaughan and they look brilliant :D . There are couple more others who sell these stuffs.