The Easiest (and Quickest!) Kitchen Transformation

I don’t know about you, but the room I try to keep the cleanest in the house is our kitchen. And despite all the work that goes into cleaning it (everyday cleaning and deep cleaning) it still looks like a battle field… one which we often lose.

Here it is during one of those rare moments where we’re winning (and rocking out awesome new lightbulbs):

Our kitchen is gorgeous and it was one of the key selling points when we decided to purchase this home, not to mention, my husband is an amateur chef and enjoys showing off his culinary skills. Tall cabinets, granite countertops and stainless steel appliances are music to anyone looking to buy (or rent) a new home. One thing we overlooked, however, was the generic faucet that came with the kitchen.

Shortly after we settled in, we noticed that the faucet also dripped unless docked to one side. Have you ever dealt with raw chicken or raw fish while cooking and tried washing your hands? What happens? You reach for the soap (spreading germs), then touch the faucet handle (spreading more germs), wash your hands and then use your clean hands to turn off the germ-infested faucet handle. And what happens after THAT is anyone’s guess. After mentally playing all of that out, I just want to toss our kitchen towels in bleach and #disinfectallthethings. My apologies to all the germaphobes out there, but all I can think of is SALMONELLA when we’re cooking. Oh, and don’t forget, we have that faucet drip that also needs to be taken care of, so that often means touching the germ-infested faucet handle AGAIN to stop the dripping while we’re cooking.

Total and utter disaster. We knew we needed to replace the faucet sooner rather than later. We also knew that, as the grown adults that we are now (hello, thirties) we wanted a faucet that:

• was made of high-quality materials and craftsmanship
• would complement our kitchen’s aesthetics, and help combine my traditional taste and those of my husband’s sleek and modern taste in décor
• would help create a cleaner cooking environment.
• embraces the latest technology

When we came across faucets shopping online, we stumbled across the Reflex line of Moen.

I fell in love with the Woodmere faucet, whereas my husband really wanted the STō. So you shouldn’t be surprised when we were over the moon to add this beauty into our family:

The Brantford spot resist stainless faucet is the perfect marriage of all of the features that were important to use. Best yet, the Brantford has a self-retracting action in the hand sprayer… inside the faucet! No more pushing the hand sprayer into a little hole in the corner of the sink. No more wrestling with the angle of the sprayer. Moen’s Reflex faucets automatically retract from any distance and angle and returns on its own, naturally. It’s the faucet that puts itself away.

Even better, this model also has Moen’s Motion Sense, so no more raw chicken juices getting onto the faucet handle. I can rest easy that we’re not a large Petri dish anymore.

How’s that for a makeover?

So, was it easy to install? You bet. I can’t believe I was stressed out about installing it. The hardest part of replacing our kitchen faucet was actually removing the old one. We almost hired a plumber to install the new faucet when one of the tightening nuts wouldn’t come off the old one. B actually took a drill bit to it out of frustration (which I highly do not recommend). Luckily one of our dear neighbors took pity on us and saved our marriage the day by removing it for us. Installation was done in about 40 minutes and we haven’t stopped playing with the motion sensor since!

Since the sprayer retracts from the faucet handle we no longer had a need for a second sprayer. We removed that one and replaced it with a Moen spot-resist soap dispenser. It was so easy! I never imagined what an impact replacing hardware would do to a room.

I finished off the kitchen makeover by installing 2-inch faux wood blinds to the window, and adding some greenery to the countertop with a small rosemary plant. Function, aesthetics and aromatherapy all in one afternoon.

What part of your kitchen would you love to makeover? Leave a comment with your answer below to enter for a chance to win a $100 Visa gift card!

Entry Instructions:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message:  “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older (or nineteen (19) years of age or older in Alabama and Nebraska). Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the [email protected] email address. You will have 2 business days to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 5/4/15 – 5/31/15.

Be sure to visit the Moen brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!