Reviving An Old Kitchen Sink Faucet

Hello everyone! I have been extremely sick for the past three days with a temp of 102 that finally broke last night. (yay!finally!) So I am trying to get caught up on everything that I missed over the past three days.

After posting my last post about sea grass baskets I said  would be sending out more sea grass decor ideas, but my plans got stalled while I fought this stupid respiratory infection, so its on to plan B. .....which is sharing with you my kitchen faucet.

When I refer to our kitchen sink as "old" I don't mean that it is antique, but that it is 10 years old and has been used for an entire decade. 

 

Thousands of times we have turned the faucet on and off and expected water on demand to clean dishes, wash dirty hands, or provide hot water for cooking, so it has taken a beating over the years and it still works just fine, but its age is definitely starting to show. 

 

When Mr. Chaos built this house in 2003 he wanted all white appliances, including a white kitchen sink AND faucet. Me....I prefer stainless and that is what I had in my house........but I will say white is pretty

........WHEN IT IS CLEAN!

 

DIRTY WHITE IS NOT PRETTY! So lets be honest.....our ten year old kitchen faucet passed the turning point and was no longer pretty!

 Look at that water build up around the seal of the faucet.

 

And the back of the facet was even WORSE! Yikes!

 

Then there is the grime that builds up around the handle......yuck.

 

 

Back when I shared my tutorial on my mason jar soap pump I noticed the build up and it has bothered me ever since and now that Spring is here it is time to Spring clean and take care of this faucet once and for all!

 

 

So I took the advice of many of you bloggers and Pinterest peeps, and used vinegar to tackle this job.

 

Along with the vinegar/water mix, here are all of the supplies needed to tackle the faucet:

 

• Spray bottle with vinegar/water mix
• Scouring pads
• Old tooth brush
• Dry Erase Cleaning Pad
 

 

I started by spraying a heavy layer of the vinegar/water mixture on the faucet and let it sit for a few minutes, then I began scrubbing the crevices with a tooth brush to loosen up the hard water deposit.

 

 

This worked great! Most of it was coming loose so after scrubbing I rinsed it with hot water and this is what it looked like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

See, most of it came up with the vinegar water mixture but I had to try a second round to get the rest of it off.

 

This time after saturating the spots with the mixture I used a scouring pad and scrubbed the stubborn spots again.

 

You can see the soapy cleaner from where I scrubbed with the scouring pad.

 

I rinsed again with hot water then it was time to tackle the handle.

 

For this I used the Dry Erase cleaning pad.

(Which I LOVE and use all the time throughout the house!)

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Before & After of the Sink Handle. You can really see a difference after using the Dry Erase cleaning pad.

 

 

 

 

 

Then after another round of rinsing with hot water and wiping down with paper towels it was done!

 

 The vinegar/water mixture helped loosen it up so in all it took about 15 minutes to make our faucet sparkle again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the Before and After of the back of the faucet.....WOW!

That's a BIG DIFFERENCE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now she's good to go for a while longer until we decide on which faucet to get.

 

Actually, we will probably put this on our list of things to do this fall, but until then at least it is not such an eye sore!

 

If you have hard water deposits and gunk like this around your faucet(s) I highly recommend using vinegar to remove it.

 

It is very effective AND is not harmful to the environment so its the perfect cleaner for this type of project.

 

 

 

Have you ever used vinegar to clean around the house? Any luck with it?

 

 

 

 

Jennifer

 

 

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