The Sink, You Think?

This topic deserves it's own post.  It's about my porcelain kitchen sink.

I was soooo impressed when warm vinegar and Dawn dish soap cleaned all the hard water stains and all the long built up scum out of my shower.  Especially after years of trying to scrub them clean.  I only could wish for as much success on my kitchen sink. (the vinegar/dawn didn't do it for the sink)  I have spent years scrubbing it and then filling both sinks with hot bleach water and letting it sit for a few hours hoping it would whiten up, which it never totally did.

Well, if only I had known about this NEW idea sooner.  I stumbled upon it looking at Sister Osterson's pinterest page.  But I didn't get a chance to try it til I was about done with my kitchen painting project.

And I totally forgot to take a before picture and I sure wish I would have, so I borrowed one from google images.  Only I think my sink looked worse.

But basically, you get the idea.  Lots of nasty scratches from washing things like pots and pans.  Here are the miracle products:

I saw some web posts about using a pumis to scrub off the black marks so I tried a pumis stone I had and it wasn't working super great (not without a lot of elbow grease) so I decided to wait til I could find some Bar Keeper's Friend, which has a lot of rave reviews on Amazon.  Then when I was in Lowes getting paint for the kitchen I happened to check over in their cleaning supplies and found not only the Bar Keepers friend but the 'scouring stick' which is pumis!  Haha!  So there is a specific pumis for this job!  And it works a lot better than anything else you will find.  I can't wait to try this on some other things.  (the toilet bowl stains for instance)  It took some super hard water deposits off around the sink drain in my bathroom and around the kitchen faucet.  The BKF worked almost entirely on it's own to get the black marks, and built up stain, out of the sink but the pumis was awesome for the larger, hard to scour spots, with less effort.
Here is a pic of my sinks after I had scoured the worst one on the right (plus I had scrubbed the divider):

The lighting is not the greatest, and the sinks could actually use some more scrubbing--I didn't have enough time or energy to do it as well as I wanted to...but here is a better pic of them both clean.  Pictures just don't do it justice!

I wanted to tell Tom I had also installed a new sink while I was doing the kitchen, but then I decided to wait and see what he'd say about it.  Well, he has never noticed it or mentioned it.  Sheesh!
But every time I go to use the sink I am stunned by how bright and clean and wonderful it looks!

And on top of that I also didn't realize the caulking in my tiles had almost completely deteriorated...no wonder I couldn't get that clean either! 
Before:

 And my new favorite tool.  I have to admit that when Tom insisted on caulking everything I thought, 'oh bother' but then I saw how much better it looked after it was painted to fill in the millions of gaps in the trim...and so I got my own caulking gun and I have become quite good at it.  It occurred to me that the tiles needed to be recaulked!!

After:

Add new wall paint and the window seal being painted and it's pretty spiffy!  Clean, white and bright!!
So yeah, you ever think it would be so easy to make improvements that would make such a huge difference?!  Wish I would have known this years ago!