Hello everyone,

We inherited an old cast iron sink when we moved into our house (old stone house - 1854). It stood on the back patio on a rickety old tongue & groove cabinet and has remained there, never connected to plumbing, for the 15 years we've owned the house (made a great ice bucket when we entertained!). It has an integrated backsplash that houses the faucet. I suppose you'd say it has an apron around it, though certainly not as deep as the apron on modern farmhouse sinks (maybe about 6" or so). It is a lot like arlosmom's sink, only with a single drainboard, so not quite as beautiful a find... but wonderful nonetheless.

We are thick in the throes of a major backyard overhaul and will be incorporating the sink into the new flagstone patio area (complete with plumbing this time!). Of course, the rickety old cabinet has made its way to the dump.

What I need from you (please, please, please) are lots of pictures of those vintage sinks installed. We need to find a way to install our sink somehow in a rustic stone unit to match the one our bbq will be built into. I doubt there will be pictures available that have it installed in/on stone, but I'm hoping I can adapt a kitchen installation to suit our needs. I have no idea how to support it, and our stone mason is also trying to puzzle it out. (We need to do this as reasonably as possible... project is growing too big).

I notice that in some of the modern farmhouse sink pictures, the sink seems to rest on a slab (wood or countertop material), then have higher cabinetry on either side of it with various reveals of counter top at the sink's upper edge. We're going to polish a slab of limestone for our countertops, so I suppose we could do something like that, but would it look weird with just a 6" high sink? Should we just position the sink atop an odd height countertop so that the sink is at the "right" height, but our countertop seems about 6" too low?

Somehow, we'll also need to leave access to the plumbing. Should we just leave it visible through an arch in the stone, or create some kind of cupboard in the stone??? Material??? Any ideas where I could find an old iron stove/fireplace door I could integrate (Canada)???

Any and all ideas, pictures, advice... no matter how "out there" would be immensely appreciated! The footing is being poured this Monday (July 26).

Thanks so much!

Sorry to ramble so much...

Sandra