An Ode to Our Kitchen Sink

Okay, so it's not an ode.  Senior English was a long time ago and I'm a terrible poet.  But, if I were a better poet, I would totally write lots of flowery poetry about our new kitchen sink.  Instead, I will write a list.  I'm very good at lists - just ask Drew.

Four Things I Love About Our New Sink: 

1.  It's 9-10 inches deep.  Our previous sink was 7-8 inches deep and I was forever getting water all over the place trying to wash the cutting board or the pasta pot.

2.  It is flat on the bottom.  The previous sink was sloped from the sides to the drains, so anything you tried to place in sink slid into the drain.  And sometimes shattered into the garbage disposal.

3.  We bought one of those suction cup sponge holder thingies to hold the sponge so it's not making puddles on the counter when Drew forgets to squeeze it out.  That's not really the "sink," exactly, but it's in the sink, so it counts.

4.  It's mounted under the counter and is not dropped in on top of the countertop material, making it easy to wipe crumbs straight into the sink.  Drew is the crumb-making master of the universe, so this is an important feature for my sanity and/or our marital bliss.

Although the sink is quite a star, there's another act in town that might steal the spotlight:

The faucet!  It's by Moen (you'll have to imagine the umlaut) and it's glorious.

Things I love about the faucet: 

1. It's tall, making it a snap to wash cutting boards and pasta pots (and hopefully our daughter-in-progress) without flooding the counter.

2.  It has a rockin' "spray" function (pictured above).

3.  If you pull on the head of the faucet, a really long hose comes out and you can spray everything.  There is no pressure loss when you are using the hose and it smoothly retracts back into the neck of the faucet when you're done.

4.  It's made of some kind of fingerprint-free material.  There are no water spots or fingerprints on it after a week of use - we'll see if it lasts, but so far I'm super impressed.

5.  It came with a soap pump that we put dish soap into.  One less bottle cluttering the counter!  (Sidenote: Our old sink had this function too, but the nozzle was so grimy, we never bothered to use it.  However, while we were setting up the new soap pump, Drew had an epiphany.  The mysterious blue bottle is the dish soap from the old sink!  The demolition guys took it out before they dismantled the sink and saved for us (reason unknown).  Mystery solved.)

There was nothing I liked about our previous faucet.  The faucet itself was this squat little thing that didn't swivel very well, making it difficult to wash tall things.  The sprayer was not attached to the faucet and was a cheap plastic model that had a really wimpy spray and a really short hose.  You couldn't even spray down the sides of the sink properly.  Somehow though, we were always battling countertop flooding.  Never did figure that one out.  Finally, there were fingerprints and water spots everywhere, all the time, no matter how hard I tried to fight it.

The garbage disposal and the dishwasher also work now, which is great.  Even though I would wash all the dishes in the world in our fancy new sink, I'm a huge fan of our dishwasher too.  And that garbage disposal.  I just don't know what I'd do without a garbage disposal.

So there you have it.  Our remaining projects in the kitchen are as follows: 
- Tile backsplash near stove
- Tile wall above sink
- Grout everything
- Install open shelving
- Replace horrible overhead light
- Touch up trim, including spots that have been recently replaced.

We're getting there!  Until we do the rest of the stuff on the list though, we're ecstatic to be able to cook and clean in our kitchen like normal people.  We'll be having people over for dinner again in no time!