Faucets and physics
There is a law of physics — which I’m sure many of my fellow housebloggers are familiar with — that says something important in the house will break just before you go on vacation. For us, this trip, it was the faucet on the kitchen sink.
Specifically, it was the faucet handle on the hot water side. That’s how I learned the handles were made of plastic. Who knew? They’re as chrome shiny as the rest of the fixture (a Moen) but they’re some kind of plastic, with a built-in stop on the underside that connects with the stem and keeps the handle from doing a 360-degree spin. It was the stop that broke, making it nearly impossible to keep the hot water turned off.
On the inconvenience scale, this barely qualified: we simply shut off the hot water supply under the sink and left the pet sitter a note on the faucet. We figured it might be possible to simply replace the handle, and left for vacation. While we were visiting family, Fate smiled: we happened to mention the broken faucet and out came a brand new, beautiful Peerless gooseneck — he’d just bought it, didn’t end up installing it, insisted we have it — wow. Anybody priced kitchen faucets lately? Yowser! What a gift!
Here’s the old Moen faucet.
I’m the Momo who forgot to take the “before” photo, so I pulled it out of recycling and propped it on the sink to snap it.
I don’t know how old this fixture is. I can’t find it on the Moen replacement parts site. It’s actually rather heavy, and everything on it except the handles appears to be either chrome or brass.
Here’s the newly installed Peerless gooseneck faucet with matching chrome-plated sprayer.
Amazing what a bit of new chrome can do to dress up an old sink!
