Sorry, it’s been a while since I rapped at ya. Ten internet points for anyone who can name that reference.
Let’s talk about the giddy thrill of home plumbing projects! I’m going to spoil the fun right now by saying that no raw sewage geysered out on my roof, I didn’t flood the house, and still have all my fingers intact. No, this is a story about product failures. First question: what is the native habitat of a kitchen faucet? If you said “the kitchen”, you are correct. If you said “the sink”, you are correct. If you said “a climate-controlled safe”, you probably work for the penny-pinching hacks that made my last faucet. Second question: what is a kitchen faucet most commonly in contact with: water, manganese, or lava? If you guessed water, then you will be surprised to see the state of the hardware used to attach my old faucet to the sink:
This is after less than seven years of use. Maybe, just MAYBE, they could’ve used stainless steel or bronze for this twenty cents-worth of hardware that is ESSENTIAL TO THE ENTIRE DEVICE. But it gets worse. Check out the “craftsmanship” and “fine material” in this faucet:
There’s not a single thing here that has stood up to the rigors of water. It may have taken six million years to form the Grand Canyon but evidently we can’t make a faucet that will last even one-millionth that long. Which is how I found myself wedged into the sink cabinet installing a brand new faucet this Saturday. Luckily I had a helper.
Post-mortem: I only had to make one trip to the hardware store. Also, I was determined to use the soap dispenser that came with the faucet so I had to disassemble the just-installed faucet to remove a cover plate. But everything is installed and works and there was no cussing. Not by me, at least. Number Two sounds like a Cypriot dock worker when he’s doing manual labor. That’s my boy.
Writer, architect, father, husband.