Laundry Room Mini-Mini-Makeover

So we used to have a utility sink in our laundry room that looked like this:

The sink, before we got our dirty little hands on it.

This sink came with the house, and we've used the heck out of it since we've been here--rinsing filthy mops; washing a ton of paint brushes and rollers; filling and dumping buckets; cleaning oil and dirt off of hands that have spent the better part of a day under the hood of a car. When we moved in, the faucet handles were a tad wonky, and the sink itself was slightly shaky--but it was still in overall good shape and looked fine.

Well, I can honestly say after over a year of our family (ab)using this sink---we finished it off. We permanently stained it; worked the faucet handle until it swung almost around in a full circle; one of the kids must have napped in it because suddenly it felt quite unstable....you get the picture. I should mention that our laundry room is right off the kitchen, in fact visible from both the den and the kitchen. So when I say that we turned this poor sink into an eyesore, it's not like nobody was ever going to see it. Everybody who entered our house was going to see it.

I started looking at replacements, hoping for something with a little more character or a tiny bit of period flair. I saw many cool sinks such as these:

Source: Sierra Copper

Source: arketype inc.

I quickly realized my search was going to be complicated by two things. First, I was limited by size; the new sink had to fit into the same 24" space as the old sink. Second, I was hampered by a sudden mental block that prevented me from spending any real money on this mini-project. Perhaps this was a side-effect of so much intensive kitchen planning and budgeting, but there was no way I was going to spend $1000 or even $300 on a laundry room sink, even if everyone was going to see it. So now I was all about value for money; if the sink also happened to be passably attractive, it would be a bonus. Voila:

New passably attractive sink!

 C put this in over the weekend, and with a minimum of cursing! I like the cupboard with doors to hide our crap; also the beadboard detail on the door panels that matches the upper cabinets (yes, they look crooked in the picture, but I measured, and they're not off by that much). The faucet is nice and I love the side sprayer. I know it's not fooling anybody, but I do enjoy looking at it more than the one we ruined. Hopefully we can be nicer to this sink and it will stick around awhile. At least until we can save up for this bad boy:

Source: Bucks County Soapstone