Walk into a kitchen and you know within seconds whether it cost a fortune or came straight off a builder’s spec sheet. You can’t always say why. It’s rarely the appliances. It’s the details around them — the stubby backsplash, the flimsy faucet, the counters buried under a toaster and three cereal boxes. Designers spend …
Pour a little hot bacon grease down the sink. Run the tap. Watch it swirl away, clean and gone. Except it isn’t gone. It’s forty feet down the line, cooling on the pipe wall, hardening into something with the density of candle wax. Your kitchen drain looks like it can handle anything. It can’t. Half …
Walk into a kitchen in 1975 and you’d hear it before you saw it. The whirr of an under-cabinet can opener. The gurgle of a Mr. Coffee finishing its cycle. A wall phone ringing, its cord already tangled around a chair leg. Then the color hit you. Warm yellow, mossy green, and a brown you …
Walk into a bathroom and you can usually guess its age before you spot a single date. It’s a feeling more than a fact. Something about the finish on the faucet, the color of the grout, the glow of the mirror. Trends move fast in here. The room you renovated to look current in 2015 …
You already know the smell. Percolator coffee, a cast-iron skillet warming on the burner, that particular cabinet that always stuck when you tried to open it. Most of what lived in grandma’s kitchen felt like clutter. Chipped bowls. Old glass. A silverware set nobody used except on holidays. Some of it was worth pennies. Some …
Walk into any showroom and it’s easy to fall in love. The glass gleams. The stone glows. Nothing has a fingerprint on it, because nobody actually lives there. Then you install it. And the honeymoon ends about a week later, usually somewhere around the third squeegee of the day. A lot of the features that …
Every winter, temperatures drop low enough to turn household plumbing into a ticking time bomb. Frozen pipes are one of the most destructive and expensive disasters a homeowner can face. When water freezes, it expands with incredible force—enough to split copper pipes and burst PVC lines wide open. The worst part isn’t always the freeze …
Walk into a modern bathroom, and you are greeted by a sea of white subway tile and gray vanity cabinets. It’s clean. It’s functional. It’s boring. Step into a bathroom from 1950, and you see personality. You see color. You see mechanics exposed rather than hidden. You see a room designed for comfort, not just …
Regardless of what reason brings you to the store to pick a new faucet, you will be faced with a choice. Choosing a finish for your faucet can be tricky, given the plethora of options available on the market. With chrome and stainless steel holding their places as two of the most popular faucet finishes …
Brita filters are a popular and inexpensive way to get filtered water without investing in a whole-home filtration system. A whole-home or under-sink filtration system might not be feasible for many homeowners. In this case, many decide to go with a filtered water pitcher or dispenser. This is an excellent, cost-effective alternative that makes sense …
Perhaps your kitchen sink is sporting a significant clog. Despite your best efforts, the clog persists, refusing to budge. So, in your haste to remove the clog, you pour Drano down the drain in hopes of easy removal. However, it doesn’t seem to be working, so you decide to leave it in the drain to …
For many folks, the kitchen hosts a hub of activity for several hours throughout the day, especially for home cooks and bakers. A kitchen sink is essential to keep a tidy, fully functional kitchen. Whether you’re washing dirty dishes, cleaning counters, or rinsing produce, the kitchen sink is vital. So, choosing the perfect kitchen sink …
When buying a new stainless steel sink for the kitchen, many people don’t realize the number of options. Aside from the designs, configurations, brands, price ranges, and so on, you need to consider the gauge of your stainless steel sink. Quick Answer: 16 gauge is thicker and typically more durable than 18 gauge. Therefore, a …
