Thinking about Faucets

Temperature Recall! Light touch for easy adjustment.

I've been thinking a lot recently about faucets. It's one of the most-used items in the kitchen. You might have a mediocre fridge, and it won't matter too much. We have an old, small, even rusty one, but it really doesn't create any problems except at Thanksgiving. I operate my faucet dozens of times a day, and if it's annoying or awkward, I'm annoyed dozens of times a day. Perhaps that's why I'm often so irritable.

When we started in this business, we didn't think much about this important topic, and had a good laugh when we heard that some people spent $500 on a faucet. Why would you do that?

Today, lots of our customers don't blanch at such a cost, even though the high-end models aren't necessarily better. It's partly a question of fashion, of what is in the magazines this year. So what makes a good faucet? It should look nice, for sure. But it also should be easy to control temperature and pressure.

Single Lever. We believe in the single lever faucet. If it's working right, it can be turned off (half of the uses) with a finger, a frying pan, or your fist if you are holding something. If it's working right, it can be turned on and set with one hand, hopefully very quickly, with a single motion. I can't think of any reason to use a two-handled faucet. Almost all of our projects use single lever faucets. But it has to be the right one.

It has to fit: There is often a bit of spatial congestion at the back of the sink, where the faucet usually goes. We often provide storage (photo) above the sink; a tall faucet can bang on the shelves. In the photo below, most of the nice, pullout-spray faucets banged on the drainer shelf. The Grohe shown had the pullout feature, but wasn't too tall.

A lot of faucets these days have the lever control on the side. This works OK in an island, but against a wall, the lever sometimes bangs on the backsplash. It can be quite discouraging to have purchased a nice expensive side handle faucet, and drilled a 1 3/8” hole in your new soapstone counters, only to find that the side lever hits the backsplash.

If you are considering a side-lever model, careful study is crucial. Sometimes we'll make a mockup of the faucet to make sure it will fit and operate.

I prefer the front lever anyway, because it's convenient for either hand, or from any position.

An ideal faucet: The ideal single lever faucet, in addition to every other virtue, would have this one: the motion that controls temperature (moving the lever left-right) would be clearly distinct from the motion that controls rate of flow (up-down). That way, you could be happily washing dishes, for example, push down to turn the water off, then lift up to resume, at the same temperature. As you lifted the lever, the pressure might increase, but the temp would hold about the same. The slow-flow would be the same as the full flow.

Years ago, I wrote an article for Fine Homebuilding, in the course of which I was complaining that the operation of single lever faucets was often vague. Every time you shut it off, you had to start over, searching, searching for the pressure and temperature you want; you might find yourself making many minute movements to get it set. Also, you might move the lever and not be sure what was going to happen.

Next month, there was a very stern letter from someone at Moen. This person explained that my complaint did not apply to their products. The Moen control separated pressure and temperature adjustment as described above. This function was called temperature recall. And in fact, this proved to be true, and since then, we have specified many Moen Faucets. Another interesting dimension of this, was that it was Al Moen who invented the single lever faucet.

In my experience, there are still many faucets out there, brand new ones from major brands, which are vague as I've described above. I find this very annoying, and wastes time to boot. But there are also several kinds that, like the Moen, give the user simple, intuitive control of flow and pressure. The Grohe in the photo above is one such. (Readers who know of other good ones, please let me know).

We've also noticed that lever shape can be an issue. A lot of front mounted faucets have a rather tall arching spout, which can require the lever to become almost vertical. The more vertical the lever, I find the operation more vague. Even the best faucets are a little harder to control with a highly angled lever. For that reason a lever closer to the horizontal has some advantages. Perhaps this is why many designs with the high arc spout have gone to the side lever. These have seemed to be easy to operate.

Deck Plates: The old two-handled double faucets were designed for two holes, 8” on center, which were bridged with something called a deck plate. When you replaced your double handle with a single, you only needed one hole in the center, but your old sink had those other holes. So many single levers come with a deck plate which serves no purpose but to cover those holes.

When building new, you can order a sink with a single hole. If you are undermounting the sink (we almost always do that) it's much tidier to get a faucet without deck plate. However, many faucets these days can be installed either way.

Make sure the handle doesn't interfere with shelving or backsplash. This a Moen Chateau. 

 It's one of Moen's less costly faucets but the mechanics inside are the same as in the expensive ones. 

This one has the deckplate because it replaces an older two-handled faucet.

Before & After: How To Make A Small Kitchen Work Like A Big Kitchen

We work on small kitchens a lot. They can be great to work in, with enough storage and work area, if done well. But often basic layout mistakes make them almost non-functional. Sometimes we are able to make a variety of small adjustments that solve the problem. In this case, we were able to reuse a lot of the existing kitchen, without making radical changes in the layout.

BEFORE - Lazy Susan cabinet in center corner

This isn't a great “before” picture of Jim and Phyllis's kitchen, but it shows the basic problems. The larger issues are that the sink work area is very awkward, and there is almost no base cabinet storage. As a result, stuff piles up on the counter, eating up the workspace. The upper shelves work pretty well; they hold a lot of stuff.

We thought a lot could be done with this, though, without tearing everything out.

BEFORE - no counter space left of sink

Looking at this from left to right, we come to a standard 33” double sink, right at the end of the counter. That's the first problem; you really need counter on both sides of a sink. It also shows the beginning of a solution. If you have a small kitchen, you need small appliances. A smaller sink opens everything up. We often use something known as a D sink. It's only 24” or 25” wide, but very big front to back compared to a standard single. You get a big sink in a small space. We're looking for inches here. This gives us about 11” of real estate we didn't have before.

Next to the sink cabinet you'll see a 24” dishwasher. We use a lot of smaller 18” dishwashers. They work fine for a small household. Now we've got another 6” to use for storage space.

To the right of the dishwasher is a lazy susan. The idea of the lazy susan is that it accesses the storage in the inside corner, potentially 4 square feet of storage that might otherwise be wasted. It sounds like a good idea, but the trouble is that to get to this space, you have to take away a foot of base cabinet left of the corner, and another foot to the right. The result is that to get 4 square feet (in plan view) of storage that is mediocre at best, you sacrifice 4 square feet of potentially much more convenient storage. And it's actually worse than that, because the susan has two levels of round shelving, whereas drawer cabinets could have up to four levels, a net loss in volume of probably 50% or even more. We almost always want to take out the lazy susan.

It's often the case that we end up ripping out everything from the existing kitchen. But, aside from reasons of cost, there were some good things about the existing setup. Those nice shelves. The workspace between sink and stove. And that nice set of perfectly good birch full extension drawers to the right side. And there was nothing wrong with the cabinetry to the right of the stove, another nice set of full extension drawers.

AFTER - new sink, new drawers, smaller dishwasher, better use of space

That's Jim Campen modeling the new kitchen. Jim and Phyllis are old friends, and Jim and I have gone on many bicycle tours together. Again moving left to right, we've used that D sink, bigger than it looks. This is made by Franke, who I believe originated the design. The smaller sink makes room for some much-needed counter to the left. There is a nice trash pullout below that. Pat Garrett and Shane Thurston carved “runnels” in the counter on that drain board side. Very nice. Putting the drain board left of the sink, liberates the counter on the right for cooking.

The dishwasher is 18”. Actually, 17 3/4” because it a Bosch, which is metric. Next you'll see a shiny new 18” set of drawers by the dishwasher. Except it isn't. It's the old set that used to be between the lazy susan and the stove. We made the new cabinets out of birch, and Steve Grunewald, who installed this with me, was able to restore the shabby and dirty fronts of those drawers to new condition.

Then, next to the stove, is a new set of matching, wide, 30” drawers. Some thought went into what was going to be stored where, so that the drawers could be the optimum depth. This more than doubles the available base cabinet storage that was there before. If kitchen design theory was going to be reduced to two words, they would be “big drawers.”

Planning what goes where, and how, means the drawers can be just the right size, and hold the maximum amount.