subject: Sinks And Faucets And Underappreciated [print this page] The kitchen: the room in the house with the most traffic and most occupied hours other than a bedroom; the place of fine dining, comfort food and family time; the place of odd smells and weird messes and noisy toddlers exploring not-so-baby-proof cabinets; and in the middle of all this wonder and awe is the most underappreciated appliance in the house.
This sink and faucet. It is nothing fancy, it has not changed much about it in the last fifty or sixty years. The sink is still a basin set into a hole in a counter top, and the faucet uses pressure to bring water directly to the user. Simple contraptions.
No, not really. Simple though they may seem, there and though the basic idea has not changed, the whole structure has. Indoor plumbing bringing water from a faraway well is barely a hundred years old and plumbing taking dirty water back out is even more new. Instead of using lead pipes, there are copper, steal and plastic pipes, all far more sanitary, and sinks have expanded from splintery wooden buckets on the floor to porcelain and stainless steel basins that are dropped in to a hole in a counter or are mounted underneath the counter.
It is such a small thing, so taken for granted, but something that could make a huge difference in a house. Faucets are becoming more and more decorative, and the functionality is improving. No longer are kitchen faucets stationary, they can swivel and so can hit and fill two sinks, plus half the counter without detaching. Not only that, most kitchen faucets with a flexible hose, and so can be detached and pointed in any direction including up or down. Then again, that last part also enables the ten year olds to have water fights in the house, and that, though funny, is not fun to clean up.
The sink also has some differences. A generic sink is usually a standard sink that is dropped into a standard hole in a counter space, but not always sealed. It is a very simple contraption, but does not keep the water overflowing the sink from leaking into the cabinet below. However, if the sink does break, it is not usually hard to find a replacement.
On the other hand, an undermount stainless steel sink is mounted under the counter and sealed, and easily catches spills, and while overflow won't leak into the cabinet, they will overrun the whole counter. It also just looks better to have a smooth edge dropping right into the sink.
So now, you will never think of sinks the same way again.
