When we bought our farmhouse sink, I naively thought I wanted one because they looked so beautiful in photos of farmhouse style kitchens. Now that we’ve had our farmhouse sink for three years, I want to tell you What No One Will Tell You About Farmhouse Sinks, especially cast iron sinks.
Fact #1: You will chip dishes and break glasses if you aren’t careful. It happens. We’ve lost two dishes and two glasses in our sink. Cast iron sinks are made tough to prevent chipping. Honestly, it’s cheaper to replace a glass or dish than the entire sink.
Fact #2: You may get wet. We’ve found that when our faucet is on the spray setting it spatters us. I’m not sure if this is a factor of the sink design or the sprayer. We didn’t have this issue with our old two basin sink. To solve the problem we use stream most of the time and put the water on low when spraying.
Fact #3: It will get dirty. A white sink will definitely show dirt and grime.
This was a bit of a bummer, as someone who had to constantly shine the surface of our old stainless steel sink with baby oil to hide the hard water spots. But, I’ve come to terms with it and only have to clean it once a week to keep it looking like new.
Fact #4: It will get scratched. Cast iron sinks will scratch, but I expected as much since we cook almost daily using heavy cast iron pans. Honestly I’m surprised we haven’t chipped the sink yet. It’s held up to a lot of abuse. In three years we have yet to chip our sink, but the marks and scratches have happened.
Fact #5: You can’t wash dishes on one side and set the clean ones in a dish drainer in the second basin. With one large sink, all the dishes in it will get wet. This was the one change that was less of an issue for us. We simply put our dish drainer on the counter. When we have company, I put the drainer out of sight under the sink.
If we were to go back in time and do it again, would I buy a farmhouse sink again?
Absolutely! I still love the look. I don’t mind cleaning the scratches every few weeks. I absolutely hated our stainless steel sink because of hard water deposits and spots. Scratches are much less noticeable than the hard water deposits.
