Last week was an exciting time in our family as my sister and brother in law moved into their very first home! 


I’m even more excited because while the large projects here at the Casa del Danks have finished up, my sister, Michelle, has asked me to help her along the way with the projects she has in mind to upgrade the house to make it a home for her and Keith.  Not to mention, is allowing me to blog about it along the way!

We’ve been pinning away on a joint Pinterest board (which you can follow here if you want to get a sneak peek into the direction we’re headed) for a few months now and I’m lucky because she has a similar style to mine.  I’m excited to help her achieve a bright, modern, comfortable look that will upgrade this 1960’s beauty.

While they were moving last Sunday, I was able to sneak in with Michelle and take some true before photos – moments after getting the call that the previous owner’s were gone and before all of their boxes crowded the rooms.  Over the course of the week I’ll share those photos and in the future we’ll be discussing the plans/progress/reveals.

My sister and bro in law understand their limits and purchased a house that didn’t need any major gut renovations (unlike their crazy sister and her husband (us!)) so most of the rooms only need a good coat of paint and some upgraded fixtures and design focus, but as you’ll see from the baseline photos, it’s going to make a huge difference!

I can’t wait to get my paint clothes out and help them makeover their new home!

With any large scale renovation, such as our kitchen, we try to be deliberate and thoughtful of every item we install.  For the most part we’re really happy with all of our choices, but the kitchen faucet hasn’t lived up to our expectations. 

I mentioned the features that I thought I liked 5 months after we finished here.  My review then: 

The faucet does not have a spray feature which we knew before purchasing, but we liked this design better so we were okay with it. The design does make the water stream pretty close to the back of the sink, so the back counter gets wet quite often when we wash our hands, but it’s something I’m aware of so when I clean up I make sure to wipe up any water.

Unfortunately, these features that we thought we could live with are the reasons we went shopping for a new option 2 years later.

We originally installed the Kraus KPF-1622-KSD-30SN Pullout Stream Kitchen Faucet in Satin Nickel, bought from FaucetDirect.com for $130, after a coupon. 

Not knowing at the time how significant spout reach was, we’ve come to realize it’s very important!  Our old faucet had a spout reach of 7.1” and the water stream fell directly downwards, but I was able to work with it by pulling out the head almost every time I used it.  When washing our hands though, we still splashed on the counter/backsplash.

The problem with all this use was the head has begun not to sit in place when I put it back.

To be honest, I probably would have lived with it.  But Mike’s been doing more dishes now that his project queue is a lot shorter, so he’s been complaining about it a lot lately.  I figured since I still do the majority, and he’s willing to replace it – why not get a new faucet and make our lives easier?  Anything to make washing dishes suck a little less is worth it to me!

I put together a list of my new must-haves: spout reach of at least  9” and spray/stream toggle button, along with the original features I liked: brushed nickel, single handle, single hole.

After hours or searching and pricing checking I landed on the Delta Faucet 9113-AR-DST Essa Single Handle Pull-Down Kitchen Faucet in “Arctic Stainless” finish and bought it from Amazon with 2 day shipping.  It arrived over the weekend and took about 30 minutes to replace the old one.

The lines are a little curvier than our old one, and I still prefer the old one’s form, but this is definitely something where function should win out.

The spout reach makes a huge difference. I took some before and after photos and through the power of Photoshop you can see just how much more:

And, my our new favorite feature, the sprayer:

It might seem wasteful to replace a relatively new faucet, but my sister and brother-in-law just bought a house (literally – they get the keys next week!) and are buying the older faucet from us for a few bucks.  They get a newer faucet to update their dated one until they chose to update their whole kitchen, and we get a new one for our kitchen, win-win!

Moral of the story: if you’re not happy with something, change it!  I convinced myself it wasn’t so bad, but I complained about it all the time.  It’s a little thing, but it makes doing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen just a little less tedious!

Two weeks ago my mom, sister, sister-in-law, and I went to New Orleans for a long weekend girl’s trip!


We did a lot of research about places we wanted to see, and most importantly, the food we wanted to eat so I thought I’d share our trip here for those who are interested!