When I toured my new home, I missed a very obvious problem, one I didn’t notice until I moved in. The place didn’t have a dishwasher. Honestly, I was astonished. The kitchen—as the landlord bragged to me—was brand new, with “soft-close” drawers and stainless steel appliances. Every appliance, that is, except the one I thought would come standard.
I instantly resolved on getting a portable dishwasher, but there was another wrinkle in my quest—the fancy new kitchen came with a fancy, pull down sink faucet with a sprayer—probably for all those dishes I had no intention of hand-washing. And pull-down sprayer faucets, in case you were unaware, are incompatible with portable dishwasher attachments. What was a gal to do?
Easy. Install my own.
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In truth, the installation of my new faucet was the easiest thing about the entire endeavor. You know what was hard? Finding one that wasn’t a pull-down sprayer model. I went to three different hardware stores, and when a worker finally located one for me, it was covered in dust because the model was so unpopular.
Related: Give Outdated Bathroom Faucets a Glow Up With Spray Paint
(If you think that’s funny, you should picture the looks I got when I tried to explain to the clerks what a portable dishwasher was.)
But installing one? That was the easy part.
How To Change Out Your Faucet Yourself
If you’re the opposite of me, stuck with a builder-basic faucet that you want to exchange for something more modern , or if you just don’t like the vibes of the faucet you got, getting a new one is way, way easier than you think. You don’t need to call a plumber. You barely need tools, other than a screwdriver and a wrench.
The first step is, of course, picking out the faucet you want. It pays to look at the number of holes in your countertop before purchasing your faucet, as you will want to line these up. It’s okay if there are more holes than you need, as you can just cap the ones you don’t. But you don’t want to be dealing with buying a faucet that needs separate countertop entrances for the controls, when you only have one hole in your countertop.
Then, you turn off the water using the knobs under the sink. Do not skip this step, or you will cause a flood. It’s best to clear the space under the sink and set out a towel and a bucket to help catch any residual moisture.
Unscrew the gaskets holding the old faucet onto the counter from the top and bottom and detach it from the water lines. You may need a wrench to loosen the gaskets here.
Next, make sure the new water lines are threaded into the new faucet and feed them through the hole from the top. On the bottom, thread them through the faucet gasket that will hold the faucet tightly to the counter. Then, secure the gasket on the bottom of the countertop so your faucet is held securely to the surface.
The water lines will probably be marked with red for hot and blue for cold but if not make sure you don’t mix these up. Attach them to the fixtures underneath the sink, turn your water back on and check for leaks .
That’s it!
What to Do With Extra Countertop Holes
In my case, I used a hole in the countertop that my landlord had installed a soap holder in to put in an extra, hot-water-only faucet that I could use for my dishwasher, Now, I just hook the portable dishwasher up to the hot water faucet and use the pull down sprayer faucet to scrub my pots.
But if I had another hole, I would absolutely use it to install a glass cleaner attachment . Because putting in splitter lines beneath the sink is as easy as installing a faucet is.
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