Faucet Upgrade

I can't tell you why it has taken us so long to do this! We've always hated the faucet in our kitchen, but what do you know... nearly five years later, it was still there. Until today.

Michael tried to get a start on it this morning, but we quickly discovered that our hot water shut-off valve beneath the sink was faulty, as we'd turn on the faucet and the water would still come pouring out. Not good! Can things like this EVER be easy?

This afternoon, I took a few pictures of what we were dealing with under the sink, and we took a ride to Home Depot to track down a plumbing expert and ask some questions. Thankfully, we were lucky in that we had some extra pipe length at the valve, so we were able to simply cut off the old valve, and replace it with a new one that didn't even require soldering--it just needed to be pushed onto the pipe. Awesome.

Once that was done, the biggest challenge was for Michael to get the old faucet out. The bolts are not the easiest things to access, but thankfully he had borrowed a special wrench from his dad that made the job just a bit easier. I'm not as limber as usual (the belly gets in the way!) so I wasn't able to do too much to help under the sink. But once the old faucet was out, the new one went in after no time at all; it was actually a really simple project. I guess that's why I can't believe it took us this long to get around to tackling it!

OK, OK... now onto the before and after photos. :)

BEFORE:

Old, nasty faucet. It's even begun leaking as of recently (which you can actually see in the photo). I'm pretty sure this is original to the house. It had seen better days, for sure.

AFTER:

TA-DA! Shiny new faucet! It has the pull-out sprayer, right from the faucet, and we replaced our old sprayer with the soap dispenser (which means we were able to get rid of our old one that took up space). I love it!