Renovating Our Kitchen: Updating The Faucet With ATG Stores

Back in July, we unveiled our kitchen’s new look. This was the final room that we repainted, and marked a major finishing point in our decade of renovations. However, as every homeowner knows, you’re never truly “Done”, and there were still some finishing touched to sort out in the kitchen. Exhibit A:

That’s our old faucet. It’s a beauty, right? This faucet was 20+ years old, and between it and its pipes, had seen much better days. It had become so leaky that the faucet’s occasional drip turned into a small, near-constant stream of water. Since we were in the middle of repainting, we’d knew we’d replace the faucet next as we had time to deal with it – the pipe was way jimmied up and cobbled together, so we knew it wouldn’t be a straightforward, 20-minute project to fix – so in the meantime, we turned the hot water off underneath the sink and only turned it on as we needed to use the water, since we didn’t want to waste water constantly with this egregious drip.

So when I received a gift certificate to ATG Stores, it was the perfect opportunity to choose a replacement faucet. After looking around their selection, we decided that the Hardware House 12-3334 Kitchen Faucet was our best bet, since it fit our needs and was within the budget of the gift card. We had a few bucks left over, and since ATG Stores carries general home items in addition to appliances, I threw in a Run ‘N Romp dog toy for Bob. He had fun tearing it apart, as he does with most doggie toys. 😉

Now, onto the business of installing the faucet. Jai decided to do this during the weekend I was in Chicago, so it would minimally interfere with my ability to use the kitchen.

I cannot tell you how nice it was to come home from my business trip and see this:

I asked Jai how it went and he said it was “As easy and straightforward to install as could be”. The setup with the pipes coming out of the house are a bit quirky, just like everything else in this 1929-built home, so Jai took the hose into Home Depot in order to find the right size for the replacement; but everything on the faucet end was completely standard and not tricky at all.

In case you’re wondering about the caulking behind the sink – when Jai got down to the business of pulling out the old faucet, he noticed that the countertop behind the faucet had eroded, which we weren’t aware of. We will replace this when it’s convenient, but after 10 years of renovating the house I am ready for a break, so I implored Jai to just put some caulk over it for now. Owning a home is tantamount to having 99 problems, so sometimes you have to choose your battles. 😉

As for using the faucet, it’s been great. As you can see, we have an attachment screwed to the faucet head so that we can hook up our portable dishwasher, which works great. The faucet is very aesthetically pleasing, and its height allows me to fill things like stockpots with so much more ease. The sprayer also works great, unlike the old one, which has been broken for almost as long as the old faucet had been installed for. But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself:

Have you done any mini-renovations lately?