Nine Red: Installing a New Faucet

Last weekend our lives were forever changed. We installed our new kitchen faucet! Life changing might be a little dramatic, but seriously - this pup has had such an impact on the dish doing life. I'm in love. And you know what? It was SO easy! The hardest part was figuring out how to remove the old one. That took FOREVER. It was like a puzzle... a rusty, mysterious puzzle... Here's the newbie:

wee-woo! I don't know how to spell that nasty wolf whistle, but you get the idea. What a beast, huh? It's the Price Pfister Mystique - oh la la... Here's the link for more info. Picking a faucet was a piece of cake. I was pretty lost as to how to know what would fit, being my first time and all. I went under our sink and counted 4 holes, and I was able to sort the Pfister site to only show faucets for 4-hole sinks, and it was good.

Read along as I tell you the tale, that is our new faucet....

It's here! I was excited that the faucet came, but I have to admit, I was scared that inside I'd find a million little pieces begging to be put together. I wasn't sure if I wanted to even open it yet. To my surprise, it was already assembled!

Of course there were some small parts, but nothing looked terribly intimidating.

I take that back, something did look terribly intimidating. Our OLD sink.. This little "gem" came with the house. I had no manual, no idea how it was attached, and oh yea - absolutely no experience messing with faucets whatsoever.

Please excuse those crazy lines in the photo, my camera is apparently going on strike & needs to be replaced ASAP. Hope you can forgive me & see past my horrible photography. I promise I'm a good person.

Back to the sink: I mean, I get the jist - turn off water, remove old faucet, clean, install new, right? Still, first time doing this, and I had to act super confident in front of Ralph so he didn't catch on, and would let me just go for it. But I read and re-read the directions and this seemed pretty straightforward.

Bye-bye old faucet.

If you are replacing a faucet anytime soon, I encourage you to jump in. This was a lot smoother than I thought it would be. I can't speak for all homes though, maybe we lucked out. Most important? Turn the water off first. There are little knobs under the sink like this:

And, well - you turn them. Off.

**Actually - learn from my mistakes - mark which pipe coming out of your wall is HOT. I forgot to do that, and had to turn the water back on before I could reconnect. It was wild. Turn ONE off then go back to your faucet and turn the water on & see who's who. Mark 'em with some tape or something, you'll need to know later.

From there you just start working the puzzle backwards. Disconnect hoses (be sure to have a bowl nearby, they are still full of water!), unscrew this or that. You'll feel things get a little loose, then pop! It's off.

Look at that filth! Yummy.

Ralph took over the cleaning while I got rust out of my eye (wear goggles! Nerdy is cool now, anyway). A little Mrs. Meyers and some Magic eraser action got most of the gunk off. And surprise! it turns out someone painted our sink 100 years ago....weird.

Can you see it in the photo? That line..No big deal really, we'll replace the sink someday for a bib sink anyhow, but you better believe this faucet is goin' on the new one. Especially after you see how easy it is to install. Take a look at these well drawn directions:

There's so much to be said about good directions. It was pretty straightforward, a gasket like thingy (technical term...lol) went on, then the sink popped on & screwed in:

So shiny it's messing with my camera.. mm! Here's a horrible under sink shot, but I had to get it so you could see how simple this all is:

See.. all nice and snug, and everything clearly labeled. Now I fully expected to have to screw a million different hoses back on the faucet, the way I had to take the old one off. Nope!

I was shocked to see that they came up with this awesome quick connect device. Included in the faucet were these pieces that screwed onto the end of the water supply hoses, then 3 snaps later - literally - I was done. With a push each hose was connected. No screwing around, (ha!) they just popped together!! And no leaks, either. This was seriously a ten minute installation..

What about the fourth hole you ask? Well, I didn't realize when we chose the sink, it has a soap pump! Aaah!

Let's just say it was even easier than the sink, I barely remember installing it. It was that easy.

And it's top filling:

Mmm.. Mrs. Meyers Radish Dish Soap.. Best soap ever.... and it's lovely to get the top of the sink de-cluttered, right?

So we're done, let's admire the faucet - but disclaimer alert: the sink, and the counters aren't permanent. They are just somewhere on an ever growing to-do list that we have. (Do you have that kind of list too?)

So shiny.... here's a nice moody shot:

The test run..

The spray function:

It also has a pause button on the nozzle, I guess... so you can pause the water. I haven't used it yet but I'm always open to bells and whistles.

The telescope......

So for my review? I'm happy. No, thrilled! I didn't realize a simple upgrade like this could really change the feel of the kitchen, but it does. And it's mega motivating me to get to work on the rest of the little upgrades like this that make such an impact. I love that it's taller than the window, now I can admire it from outside. Ha!

Thanks for reading my plumbing adventure. I can now add this to my resume (maybe not) and I'm not afraid to tackle all the other faucets in the place. Have you ever replaced a faucet? Are you planning on it? Stay tuned... not to ruin a surprise or anything but I've got a giveaway coming up for one of these bad boys.

You can see all the faucets Pfister has to offer here: Pfister Faucets.

Have a great weekend!

-Jesse

*Special Thanks to Price Pfister for providing us with a complimentary faucet to review. All opinions, photos & words are my own, and I was not asked to say anything specific. It's just a great faucet!*

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