Sigh. I have a sink problem. See, the faucet is old and needs to be replaced. For a while it was doing that thing where it would fall down when you turned it on, because a part was wearing out. Then it got sticky–it’s hard to lift at all and getting worse.
So, simple, replace the faucet, right? Well, the sink is also old; it’s porcelain and there are several chips, especially around the drain it’s looking kind of weird, and it really needs to be replaced too. As long as I’m going to replace the faucet, I should replace the sink at the same time.
But the sink is embedded in tile. So I’ll have to get tile guys out to break the sink out and the re-do the tile. Only I don’t actually like the tile, so why should I pay for it to be redone? If I’m going to pay, why not get new counter stuff, Corian or whatever it is people use now?
Because it would cost a bunch of money and be a ton of trouble, that’s why. So my faucet sticks. It’s really getting bad. I should replace it…
That’s exactly why I’m leaving my stained aluminum kitchen sink like it is. New sink makes the counter and backsplash look bad, but redoing that would draw attention to the old cupboards, and then the floor, and that stupid lowered ceiling and those godawful flourescent lights. And right next to the kitchen is the dining room!
Replacing anything would necessitate gutting the house and starting over.
My mother-in-law started out like that, and $85,000 later, she has a newly remodeled kitchen. She’s already complaining about the new refrigerator. (She got the kind with the freezer on bottom, and hates it.)
It is a slippery slope, when I start tinkering with a kitchen. I want some $300 thing, and then a $1000 improvement, and pretty soon, I’m looking at a full remodel. My husband tends to hide kitchen catalogs from me, for good reason.
Yeah, the problem with waiting is that you run the risk of the faucet leaking around the seal, and then water drips (unknowingly) down through the plumbing and into various crevasses and tiles and before you know it the leaky faucet ends up costing 5 times what it would have cost to replace it properly in the first place.
That’s how it all started in my kitchen four years ago. I had two broken floor tiles…several thousand dollars later - I have an awesome kitchen! My husband and I did all the work - mostly him though. Except for laying the floor tiles - we hired pros to do that. ‘Cuz we’re too freakin’ old to lay tiles - old knees ya know.
Thank you! We had rotten bottom cabinets that he rebuilt. Water damage on MDF ain’t pretty. Mr Rebo is very handy, but it takes him forever. The countertops are plain ol’ formica. I wish we had gone with granite, or granite tiles. Tiling countertops and backsplashes is pretty easy.
I hope you get what you want really soon! FYI - a stainless steel sink is the only way to go. I stupidly got a “pretty” white enamel sink - stains very easily, and has pot marks on it.
I want to redo my kitchen again. (Not really, it’s a royal pain.) But think through what you really want - and be very practical.
Oh, I definitely want stainless steel. I’ve always had porcelain and it gets stained and chipped and yuck.
Maybe I can just live with tile, can the tile guys get the old yucky stained grout out somehow? I just don’t like the grout part.
I also have the problem, I am realizing, that the lower cabinets are losing their varnish and need refinishing. Argh! I love my cabinets the way they are! Why must they age? I bet if I refinish just the lower ones, they won’t match any more and will look weird, won’t they?
I’m going to go live in a sod house with a campfire.
And other famous stories where a minor thing led to a big to-do.
Actually I had to look at the OP’s name to make sure I hadn’t posted this in my sleep :).
Our kitchen has an odd combination of low-end and high-end features. Double wall oven and nice side-by-side fridge… but cheap electric coil cooktop (not gas), plain white (formerly-white, anyway) laminate countertops, decent-quality cabinetry except they’re white laminate also which looks cheap no matter how good it is (and a completely unusable blind corner in the lower cabinets), really SHITTY porcelain sink that isn’t big enough to wash anything and has a lip that rises nearly an inch above the surrounding counter, and we’re about to replace our faucet for the second time since we moved there 5 years ago.
The caulking is going around the sink and the brass ring around the drain attachments used to have a white coating to make it match the sink only about 80% of that has flaked away so it looks worse than if the thing were simply brass. So we want to replace the sink with a nice stainless one that has asymmetrical sides so we can wash a 9x13 baking pan without using the sprayer and soaking the floor. But if we’re going to do that, we’d have to get a drop-in rather than an undermount and that wouldn’t look much better and why not do the countertop at the same time so we can have an undermount plus decent-looking counters… but if we’re going to do that why not replace the cabinets because we couldn’t do them later on and be sure the countertop would fit… Oh, and all the appliances are white which I think looks hideous and would look awful with the newer cabinets so we’d have to live with a mix of white (existing re-usable oven/stove/dishwasher) and other-color (cooktop replacement) for years because they’d decide to become reliable and last forever so we’d have no excuse to replace them with other-color appliances.
I think you see where this is going! We actually got so far as to get a bit and pick out cabinetry but we never did get a much better cabinet layout and it was going to cost a friggin’ fortune, far more than a similar remodel we did a few years back.
So we postponed this indefinitely.
But… the sink is really, really bad and needs to be replaced…
Heh, we started with new slate floors, then wanted granite to better blend with them, then decided a new sink, fixtures, stove and oven would be necessary, then decided to put in travertine backsplash while we were at it. Now, I think the wallpaper probably needs to be done too. No kidding, once you start…
We’d first planned on going with Corian but after visiting with our contractor we decided granite was the way to go. Price was fairly close if I remember correctly and resale whenever you move should be better. The decision then became 1/2 or 3/4 inch and 3/4 won out because the labor on plywood for the 1/2 equaled the cost increase for the thicker cut. The only problem I found with granite was when I went to the wholesaler to pick out the exact slabs I’d be purchasing. I thought I knew just what we wanted (tan and brown) but then you see everything that’s available and holy cow, I wanted it all! As a geologist, it was kid in a candy store time. There’s some seriously beautiful stuff out there. We did go with our first choice though and I’ll just keep all the other in mind for future projects.
Consider one of the deeper sinks if you get a new one. A lot less splash. Plus you can get different configurations for each side, which is really nice. Same with the faucet, lots of options; sprayer that comes through the main neck, variable spray settings, recessed soap dispenser, etc.
The construction hassle wasn’t bad. Maybe two days for the granite install. A half day for the sink and appliances, although if your sink is “undercounter” it will need to set up before the GD and plumbing’s reattached. Probably two days for your backsplash, depending on what you choose. Once it’s all done though, the inconvenience is minor in comparison to the pleasure you derive from then on.
I can’t get over what a difference it’s made and bet you’ll be really pleased if you decide to pull the trigger. Good luck!
My advice? Temporize. Just go buy the cheapest faucet you can get at Home Depot and replace it. For $50 bucks, you can buy yourself a couple of years to think about it. If you have flexible supply hoses, it’s actually a piece of cake as a do-it-yourself project.
My mom put in Corian and really likes it. It’s not as porous as the natural stones so it doesn’t have to be resealed. If I could put in my countertop of choice it would be an engineered stone product, the ones where they grind up quartz or some such and mix it with a rock hard epoxy. They don’t need sealed and they are as pretty as the granite counters (to me anyway.) Sadly, I’ll be getting laminate and I must be happy with that.
My sister is great at design, so I went to her and asked if I could fit my laundry into the downstairs half bath.
Two weeks later, I have plans for a new laundry, new half bath, moving the basement stairs, new basement entrance from outside and a whole new kitchen.
We did “The Best Cheap Kitchen Remodel We Could Do” thing. I went with regular old formica countertops because my cabinets, new as they are, just aren’t as nice as the countertop would be if I went with something beautiful. We did the floor with cheap ceramic tile and I got one of those fiberglass sinks. When I decide to replace the cheap-ass scratched up sink, I will go with stainless. I say whatever you do, don’t skimp in the sink department. You’ll regret it in 5 years.
I really want to remodel. I should never open threads like this.
No kidding, once you start…
