Updating the Bathroom Faucet

When we moved into our house there wasn't anything to get excited about in the bathrooms.  Pretty standard, inexpensive fixtures and finishes made up both of them.  They are small bathrooms so upgrading some of these things really helps to bring them into this century and feel polished.  Doing things a little at a time has allowed us to save some cash because we do not buy anything unless we have the money for it.  We never use credit cards so it might be a slower process but it's a financially responsible process. (If you are interested in our budget process you can read about it here).  So little by little we are pulling our bathrooms out of 1961.

Our next upgrade comes in the form of a new pretty stainless steel faucet.  We actually caught a great sale and scored this faucet at a great price so we were thrilled.  It's a delta faucet and we got it for $42 - which is a steal, you would know if you have been stainless steel faucet shopping lately.  Now, I have to admit for most of the installation process of this faucet I was not present.  My job was to keep Silas occupied and away from the project.  He was really wanting to help his Dad but unfortunately the only help he could provide was climbing in the bathroom cabinet and throwing tools into the toilet so he had to sit this one out with me.  So I'm going to give you the steps, although they probably won't be the best to go by.  You can at least enjoy the before and after pics of the process anyway.

So here's a before shot of our previous faucet, all boring and plain.

First crucial step - turn off the water supply.  Simple yet very important.  We have been on many a youth mission trip when this has not been done and water goes a flying.  Comical, yes.  Frustrating, possibly. Next, is just removing the old faucet and drain, ours came out pretty easily.  Bye, bye ugly faucet.

Then you need to secure the new faucet to the sink, ours included a rubber gasket so it did not need caulk at this step.  The rubber gasket is installed on the base of the faucet before you connect the water supply tubes to the faucet base.  Then just a little tightening to secure everything in place.

The drain comes next, which was the most difficult part, it needs to be sealed with silicon to prevent leaking.  The silicone needed a good 24 hours to dry so just make sure if you are installing a new sink that you won't need to use it for a day.  

And, we're done!  The great thing about this faucet is that it came with great instructions so any issues that might have come up was easy to figure out.  

Here's the Side by Side:

This new faucet takes 40 years off of this room.  We love our little clearance faucet upgrade.

So there it is, our not so useful faucet upgrade project.  Now that we have most of the fixtures upgrading and other finishes in place I think it will be a good time for a full bathroom reveal this week.  Stay tuned!

As I was writing this I couldn't help but notice God reminding me of how He works in our lives.  Working with students something we are used to hearing over and over is the question, How do I know when God is speaking to me?  First off, knowing the way God speaks is important.  God speaks by the Holy Spirit through scripture, prayer, other believers or the church and circumstances.  A lot of the time we just aren't listening.  Also, I think when God speaks we want the whole revelation in one giant answer.  I've found a lot of times in my life God reveals Himself to me step by step, answer by answer.  Sometimes we won't be able to understand every detail of how our situation will go, instead we have to trust God and exercise faith.  The details are in God's hand.  He holds the universe in place (one way our faith is established), he can work out our steps.  The more faith we have, the more we listen to Him when He is speaking and the more details He will begin to reveal.  It's a beautiful relationship we can share with Him.  We just have to listen.

But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. Galatians 5:5