Philip Fibiger

We’ve been doing a lot of minor renovation around the house, trying to make the place ours. Painting, replacing hardware, new appliances in the kitchen, that sort of thing. Our half bath downstairs was painted a nice color but in all other aspects it wasn’t at all our style. It had this ugly gold hardware on the sink, and the toilet paper holder and towel ring were gold and antiqued iron. The walls had “decorative” fleur-de-lys painted all over it. Emily painted over the decorative paint and I hit ebay for some new bathroom hardware.

The Kohler Fairfax faucet that I bought was really astounding. The old faucet I removed (which likely wasn’t that old, maybe 7-8 years?) hooked up the traditional way. Each handle and the faucet were attached separately with nuts, puttied in place, plumbed to the water supply with lengths of pex. The multi-part drain was epoxied together. Contrast that with the new faucet set:

A single piece drain that has a gasket built in and just screws tight (plumbers putty around the drain is the only place it’s required). Braided stainless supply lines that can fit a variable length run. The real beauty of the installation design is the way the faucet mounts to the sink itself. Instead of having to putty it down and then try to tighten it down from below, it has a rubber gasket and uses a toggle bolt to hold it tight. The toggle is guided up the bolt by a pair of plastic guides, literally all you do is fit the faucet in place (the toggle pops through the centerset hole) and then turn the hidden screw (in the drain plug control) until the toggle moves up flush with the bottom of the sink.

In the end removing the old faucet and cleaning up the old putty mess was the longest part of the process, actually installing the new set was a 10 minute job. A lot of home improvement technologies feel like they really haven’t changed in 50 years, It was a pleasant surprise to find out how easy Kohler had made this task.