Thanksgiving re-runs: My last post on faucets

This is a series on faucet finishes I wrote and ran originally in February 2009. I'll be back tomorrow with fresh stuff!

Fixtures, fixtures everywhere but what does it mean and what should I pick? Well, what it means is that there are a bunch of manufacturers who make a bunch of finishes and the one you should pick is the one you like. Many thanks to Kohler for all of their help with this series. They make a high quality product at a price point that's a value proposition. A Kohler faucet is not a faucet you'll be replacing any time soon. They are as sound mechanically as they are beautiful too.

So here are a couple of fun facts I got from my pal Sarah the product manager at Kohler. 

Brushed nickel is the number one selling finish for kitchen faucets.

Chrome is number one on baths.

A new finish has a ten year run rate. By that I mean that when Kohler introduces a new finish, they expect it to remain in production for ten years. Though exceptions to that ten year rule abound. Chrome and nickel have been consistent best-sellers since the 1930s and oil rubbed bronze has been in production for the last 15.

As an aside form me, expect oil rubbed bronze and its kin to be the next ones forced into retirement.

What's making a strong come back are warm gold tones. And that's designer speak for brass. You heard it here first kids, inside of five years all the cool kids will be sporting brass faucets and cabinet hardware. Again. Ugh. I never liked it much the last time around, but who am I to buck a trend? So here's a run down of some of Kohler's cool fixtures and finishes.

Never use harsh abrasives or lime-dissolving chemicals to clean a new faucet of any kind. On a faucet with a living finish, the heavy duty cleaning stuff will remove your hard won patina. On consumer-grade faucets, a thorough clean with the big guns will damage the clear top coat and end up reducing the life of the finish. Remember, a soft cloth and a mild detergent are your plumbing fixtures' best friends.

This is the Antique in  faucet in Brushed Nickel

This is the Purist in Polished Chrome

This is the Clairette in Stainless

This is the Devonshire in Brazen Bronze

This is the Devonshire in Oil Rubbed Bronze

This is the Finial in Vibrant French Gold

This is Memoirs in Polished Chrome

This is Pinstripe in Polished Nickel

So your options are seemingly endless, but know that a quality faucet will last forever. So remember that when you're considering your finish options. Forever. Hmm.

So thanks to my pals at Kohler for all the good information. I now know more about faucet manufacturing and finishes than I ever thought existed. If you ever have a question about this stuff, just shoot me an e-mail. I'm sure I'll be able to answer it.

Thanksgiving re-runs: The Peoples' faucetry

This is the fourth in a series of posts on faucet finishes I'm running during my Thanksgiving break. I wrote this series originally in February '09.



So if the higher end of the market uses ancient foundry methods to make objets d'art doing double duty as bath and kitchen fixtures, what's available to the rest of us? You know, the same us who bristle at the thought of an $1800 lavatory faucet.

Well, that's where our pals at Kohler come in with their modern and efficient production methods. Metal casting and finishing have come a long way since the Babylonians figured out how to cast bronze thousands of years ago. When plumbing fixtures are mass-produced now, they are cast in a variety of base metals (usually alloys of brass), then they're plated and finally, they're clear coated to resist corrosion and to make the finish last a lifetime.

All manufacturers have their own, secret alloys and formulas; but the production methods used by all of them are essentially the same. Individual components are cast in a base metal alloy and then polished and cleaned. Then the components are plated with a finish and covered with a clear top coat.

Plating takes two forms these days, and the first method is electroplating. Electroplating was invented in the early 1800s and was in wide-scale use by the middle part of the same century. Electroplating uses electricity to deposit a thin layer of metal on another metal. It's a pretty simple operation now, but figuring it out in the first place represented a huge leap forward.

An electroplating chamber is essentially an electric circuit. An anode is made from the finish metal, in the diagram above that metal is nickel (Ag). The anode's connected to the positive pole of a battery. The target for the electroplating (in the example above, a spoon) becomes the cathode and gets connected to the negative pole of a battery. The anode and the cathode are submerged in a bath of conductive solution and the electricity gets turned on. The electricity flows through the solution to complete the circuit. As the electricity leaves the anode, it takes nickel molecules with it. When the electricity lands on the cathode, it leaves the nickel molecules behind. Ta-dah! We have an electroplated spoon.

There's a second finishing method called physical vapor deposition (PVD). Physical vapor deposition is a marvel of physics and chemistry but I'll spare you another description of a process here. Suffice it to say that in PVD, the conductive solution is replaced with a gas and the whole process takes place in a vacuum. PVD allows a manufacturer more control over the finished product and by adjusting the mixture of gasses in the vacuum chamber, a manufacturer can achieve a number of effects that aren't possible with electroplating.

I bring this up because if you're in the market for a new faucet or two, you will come across the acronym PVD. PVD is never defined and that kind of officious acronym use drives me nuts. So now I know what it means and you do too.

Once the plating's done the fixture gets its final color and finish. If the final finish is something like oil-rubbed bronze, then there's a multi-step powder coating process that follows the plating. If a final finish is something like brushed nickel, then the plated fixture has a texture applied to it. The actual finishes always sit on top of a base of plated metal.

After all that, the fixture gets a clear coat that's usually cured with heat. It's kind of like a clear glaze on pottery, though the temperatures are nearly so high as that. This clear top coat is what allows Kohler to offer a lifetime warranty on their finishes. Oil-rubbed bronze will look like oil-rubbed bronze forever, brass finishes will never tarnish and nickel will never get any more dull than it was the day it was installed.

So when you look at this vibrant brass finish from Kohler, you're not really looking at a brass fixture. If you could see it in microscopic cross section, here's what you'd see.

These same electroplating and PVD methods get used on all mass-market finishes from brushed nickel to stainless steel, from polished brass to chrome. This is not a bad thing. Plated and sealed fixtures last longer and look better longer than their solid-metal counterparts. So remember that you're talking about finish colors, not finish compositions when you leave the high end of the market behind.

Thanksgiving re-runs: Patinas on a budget

This the third in a series on faucet finishes I'm running over my Thanksgiving break. I wrote them originally in February '09.



So for the last couple of days I've been talking about living finishes and patinas and how they fit into the world of plumbing fixtures. To review; copper, bronze and brass as reactive metals --they change color and texture as they react to their environment. That change is called a patina. A patina is what corrosion's called when it's desirable. Think about it. The patina silver develops is called tarnish and it's a badge of shame. Copper does the same thing and people call it verdigris and prize it. Interesting.

Now, in addition to those naturally-occurring color and texture changes, the word patina is also used to describe virtually any color applied to metal. Although that word tends to be reserved for colors that mimic a naturally-occurring patina. Make sense?

So, if this is what bronze ingots look like,

And this is true brushed bronze that would end up being used on a $1900 lavatory faucet,

(Plinth, by Paul Martin Wolff)

what are you supposed to do when you have a budget?

Enter our friends at Kohler.

This is a $300 lavatory faucet, the Fairfax single control, and it's being shown here in Kohler's finish, brushed bronze.

Now, when Kohler refers to one of their fixtures as having a brushed bronze finish, they are talking about its color. When Rocky Mountain Hardware talks about brushed bronze, they're talking as much about the composition of the faucet as they are the color of it.

True bronze made by somebody like Rocky Mountain is a labor-intensive process and bronze is a notoriously finicky metal. Not only that, Rocky mountain is a bronze foundry and they make their bronze fixtures and hardware using sand casting and the lost wax method. Surely you remember the lost wax method from grade school social studies. That's right, Rocky Mountain does things the way the ancient Babylonians did and they charge accordingly. I'm not knocking Rocky Mountain for a second here either, seeing the fruits of their labor makes me weak in the knees. It's really beautiful stuff and it's intended to be a once in a lifetime purchase.

But love it though I do, I can't afford to throw thousands of dollars around on lavatory faucets and that's where our friends at Kohler come in again.

Kohler doesn't make that brushed bronze Fairfield single lever lavatory using methods handed down from the ancient Babylonians. But what they do make is beautiful enough.

Large scale plumbing manufacturers cast a faucet from a base metal; usually brass, zinc or a combination of the two. The base metal faucet is polished and then electroplated. Once it's electroplated they then apply a patina and then finally, they seal the color with a clear top coat. As soon as that fixture leaves Kohler's production floor it's locked in time. It will not continue to change. It won't evolve into another color. In fact, it's guaranteed not to change for life.

So if this is Rocky Mountain Hardware's deck-mounted faucet with an applied rust patina,

here's Kohler's answer to that patina, oil-rubbed bronze. Again, what they're describing is the color.

The two faucets pictured up there are separated by production methods, a slight variance in color and about 1500 dollars. The real bronze fixture will continue to change over time and the bronze-colored fixture is guaranteed never to change. Confused? Don't be. Let the price tags be your guide. If a lavatory faucet costs over a thousand dollars, chances are good that it's made from copper, bronze or brass and will have a living finish. If faucet costs under $500, it will not have a living finish and it will look factory fresh for life.

So Monday I'll delve into the exciting world of nickel, chrome and steel. I'm already giddy with anticipation.

Thanksgiving re-runs: No really, what's a living finish?

This is the second post in a series that started yesterday. I wrote them originally in February '09.



OK, so yesterday I ran through three basic, reactive metals that come into play when it comes to faucets: copper, bronze and brass. When it's the actual metal we're talking about, manufacturers use terms like "living finish" and "organic finish" to indicate that their fixtures will continue to age and change with time. I'll get into nickel, chrome and stainless (the non-reactives) later, for now I want to stick with copper, brass and bronze.

Now, these living finishes are pretty much the exclusive province of the higher end of the market. For a lot of people, the changeable nature of brass, copper and bronze is a selling point. And that changeable nature comes at a premium.

Here's a $1500 kitchen faucet from Herbeau. It has a living finish of weathered copper and weathered brass.

And here's a $1900 tub faucet in weathered brass, also from Herbeau.

These fixtures are truly made from brass and copper and then they have a patina applied to them in the factory. These patinas are pigments and chemicals that react with the base metal to speed up the aging process. These patinas allow the base metals to look like they're already aged upon arrival. On a living finish, the metal is left unsealed. That is, without a clear top coat to prevent corrosion. Without that clear topcoat, these faucets will also continue to age and their colors will continue to evolve as the base metal reacts with the environment. No two of these faucets will age at the same rate or go through the same color phases. Their continued evolution is completely dependant on the environment where they're placed. Hence the term living finish.

It's important to remember that the world of plumbing fixtures doesn't use the conventions of science to categorize these finishes. Fixture manufacturers across the market use these metallurgical terms to describe a fixture's appearance, and not necessarily its composition. However, when there's a desirable base metal involved, that fact is made amply clear.

Here's a deck-mounted faucet from Rocky Mountain Hardware. It's made from bronze and has had a rust patina applied to it. Rust is iron oxide, a common reddish pigment. So this faucet is made from bronze with a reddish brown patina applied to it. With time it will continue to to turn more brown. It also has a suggested retail price of $1900.

Here's a wall-mounted faucet, also from Rocky Mountain Hardware. This faucet has been cast in bronze and has a medium patina applied to it. It carries a suggested retail price of $1600 and it's mind bendingly beautiful. Bronze has a warmth to it that no other metal comes near. Bronze has been a desirable metal for thousands of years for a very good reason --it's beautiful, strong and lasts forever.

This medium finish also looks suspiciously like something that started showing up in the consumer market around ten years ago, oil-rubbed bronze.

Now oil-rubbed bronze is where my conversation with the Kohler finish developer comes in. Since these living finishes and desirable base metals are the province of the high end of the market, how does this stuff trickle down to the consumer end? Well, come back tomorrow when I tackle the inter-market grudge match between true bronze and  the oil-rubbed bronze gang.

Thanksgiving re-runs: So what the devil's a living finish anyway?

I'm taking a few days off to celebrate Thanksgiving and in lieu of writing a post a day over the holiday, I'm going to run a series on faucet finishes I wrote in February '09. Happy Thanksgiving one and all!

I had a similarly phrased question from a reader the other day and it's sent me on a quest to find out. As luck would have it, I'd already set up an interview with a finish developer from Kohler prior to being asked that living finish question, so I asked the source directly and I learned a thing or two.

That Kohler conversation gave me a ton of information to write about by the way, so look for a series on plumbing fixture finishes over the course of the next week or so. But in the meantime, here's a little something I learned about metals and patinas.

This is copper.

This is what happens to copper when it's exposed to the elements. Copper reacts to acids and alkalis in the environment to form a variety of chlorides, sulphides and carbonates known collectively as verdigris. That's French for green gray. Verdigris is composed of  copper carbonate or copper chloride primarily and those chemicals make up the green patina most people associate with copper. 

Copper is a highly reactive metal that's almost never used in its pure form. Generally, copper's combined with another metal to make it stronger and a little less reactive. When copper's combined with tin the result is bronze. These are bronze ingots.

When copper's combined with zinc the result is brass. And here's what raw brass looks like.

Due to their copper content, both metals retain a lot of the reactivity inherent in copper, though it's a bit less pronounced.

So here's what happens when bronze is left to its own devices. It turns a warm brown with yellow tones. These are the doors to the Pantheon in Rome and they're about 1800 years old. They're also the color of dark chocolate.

Brass on the other hand goes golden brown with a slight greenish tone to it.

These naturally occurring patinas are what's meant by a living finish. These patinas take time to develop and really, they never stop developing. After all, they're an ongoing chemical reaction.

When it comes to faucets; copper, bronze and brass are never left in their natural states to be allowed to age into their natural patinas on their own. It can get confusing because most manufactured faucets and fixtures have a patina applied to them. Let's back up for a sec though.

If you remember your basic chemistry, an alloy is the mixture of two or more metals. Alloys like brass and bronze aren't categorized scientifically, and there aren't any standard recipes for these metals. On top of that, copper never shows up in its pure state --it too is usually an alloy that's made mostly of copper. Add to that that the natural process of oxidation is called a patina, but so is virtually any color applied to a base metal. Argh.

I'll dig into this a little further tomorrow, but for now just remember that a living finish is a finish that will age and change color with time. On purpose.

Delta Faucet's TV ads keep raising the bar

Man, I remember singing along to this movie's title song like it was yesterday.




Although I have to admit Rose Royce's 1976 mega hit didn't exactly have staying power. Almost as soon as it peaked it went away to make room for Mary MacgGregor's Torn Between Two Lovers. I'll stop now before I date myself even further.

Anyhow, last year's ad for Delta Faucet's Pilar by Leo Burnett still gets my heart pumping.




Delta's follow up this year (also by Leo Burnett) is for the In2ition Shower and it breathes new life into Rose Royce's one and only chart topper to terrific effect.




Have you seen it?

I love the effects in addition to jiving to the theme song.

Here's how they did it.




Pretty slick Delta, good job! Check out the Rest of Delta's offerings on their website.

Ich gehe im Januar nach Deutschland

[Now featuring corrected grammar! 11-10-10 PA]

That's right. On the morning of January 19th, 2011 I'm boarding a plane bound for Cologne (that's Köln to those of us who are in the know) where I'll be attending the annual internationale möbelmesse. The internationale möbelmesse is better known as the IMM and it's the world's premier showcase of new furniture and products for the home.

Last year's IMM had 1500 exhibitors and had 100,000 visitors from all points of the globe. This year's expo promises to be even bigger and for the first time in the 62 years of the show's existence, there will be a separate exhibit for the international kitchen and bath industry and they're calling it The Living Kitchen.

The Living Kitchen has its own website and from the looks of things it will surpass the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in the US in size and scale.

Needless to say, I'm beyond excited about this. I'll be blogging and Tweeting from Germany as part of an industry press junket courtesy of Blanco. I cannot thank them enough for this opportunity.

Blanco is a German sink and fixture manufacturer and their products are widely available worldwide. I sit on Blanco's Design Council, an honor I've held for the last year. It's through my involvement with Blanco's Design Council that I'm Cologne bound.

There are five other Design Council members going on this trip. That all six of us know each other already will make this trip even more memorable that it would have been otherwise. My traveling companions to Cologne are Jamie Goldberg, Cheryl Kees-Clendenon, Susan Serra, Leslie Clagett and Kevin Henry. Five out of the Cologne Six are are part of the Blogger 19 interestingly enough. What year this has been. Whew!

In addition to experiencing the sights and sounds of Cologne and the IMM, We'll be touring a Blanco factory and meeting with Blanco Germany's industrial designers.

Needless to say, I'm beyond exited. Thank you again and in advance to Blanco and their representation in the US for this honor.

Blanco Germany takes the idea of an integrated cutting board as far as they can

Check out this sink series from Blanco Germany. Actually, these sinks are available all over Europe and the UK and if the stars align, we'll see them in the rest of the world eventually. These ideas are too good for them not to spread.

First up is the Blancoalaros sink.

The sink itself is made from Silgranit and it has two drain boards to either side of the bowl. Cutting
boards fit into grooves in the sink rim and can slide along the length of the sink.

In the image below, the Blancoalaros sink's been paired with the Blancotelescope retractable faucet. When the faucet's in its down position, the entire space taken up by the sink can be covered with a cutting board. In my tiny kitchen, something like that would be almost three feet of found counter space.

In the sink above, the cutting boards are in Silgranit that matches the sink itself. The metal platform and stunning metal strainer are available as accessories.

Also sold as accessories for the Blancoalaros sinks are the Crystalline series of black and white cutting boards.

In an open, modern space a black sink cover/ cutting board would be the thing that really made the room perfect.

It's this kind of thinking that's made Blanco an industry leader on both sides of the Atlantic and as they increase their presence in the US, look for more innovations such as the ones I'm discussing here. I've seen other integrated cutting boards before, but I've never seen them so intelligently designed. Good job Blanco. See the Blanco products available in Europe here and Blanco's North American offerings here.

Beauty's where you find it

What does this hair style,

Image from InStyle

have to do with this kitchen faucet?

Hint: it's all in the handle.

This is the Venuto by Brizo and it's another home run hit by the team from Indianapolis. The Venuto is a series kitchen faucets and accessories from the great minds at Brizo. The Venuto accomplishes the difficult task of being thoroughly modern without being cold. It's smart too, two of Brizo's newest advances are tucked inside neatly. The Venuto uses Brizo's SmartTouch^TM and MagneDock^® technologies so that it works as well as it looks. SmartTouch^TM allows a user to turn the faucet on and off with just a touch placed anywhere on the faucet or the handle. MagneDock^® holds and locks the sprayer firmly in place when it's not in use.

As a collection, the Venuto is available in both kitchen- and bar-sized faucets and a large number of coordinated acessories. There's even a bud vase.

The Venuto is available in Brizo's Chrome,

Brilliance Stainless,

and Black finishes.

 As with all of Brizo's finishes, the Venuto's carry a lifetime warranty.

The Venuto series for the kitchen, and the Virage series for the bath I profiled yesterday are further proof that Brizo's a brand to watch out for. I can't wait to see what's next.

Delta revisits a classic

In the 1950s, the Delta Faucet Company introduced the first single-handle kitchen faucet. Back then, it was called simply The Delta Faucet. For a long time, this is what a kitchen faucet looked like. Times changed and tastes changed and Delta introduced a wide collection of other styles. They remained true to their roots and the original, single-handle Delta faucet never went out of production.

I grew up in a rambling old house in rural Pennsylvania. The kitchen in that house had been updated at some point in the 1950s and when I arrived in the 1960s, that same kitchen was still feeding our family and serving as our central gathering spot. I'm fortunate to have a lot of photos from those years and when I look back through those old black and whites a lot of them were taken in that old kitchen. From the background of some of those photos, I can see that we had a Delta single-handle faucet. We were hardly unique in our faucet choice. The Delta single-handle delivered tap water to a generation.

Well, rather than retiring the Delta single-handle, it's now called The Classic and Delta just announced The Classic's first redesign in its more than 50-year history.

Here's what The Classic looked like in the last model year.

That kitchen faucet has been in more apartments where I've lived over the years than I can count. And why not? It worked, it lasted a long time and it was an inexpensive faucet.

Here's what it looks like now.

Wow. The suggested retail price on that faucet is $133.50 but I found it for less than $90 on a number of plumbing websites. Double wow. You know, if you showed me that faucet and told me that it cost $400, I'd probably say something like, "Hey, that has really nice lines..." I'm telling you, that price point is proof that low budgets don't have to mean ugly outcomes. That Classic is an attractive fixture for any price point. What makes it beyond attractive is that The Classic is a value proposition all around. Check out the entire Classic collection on Delta's website.

Delta's update of The Classic isn't purely cosmetic, the lion's share of the development of this faucet is inside, where you can't see it. Delta threw out everything about how a faucet is supposed to work and re-imagined it from the ground up. The original single-handle had a then-revolutionary ball valve inside of it. It was an industry first that became an industry standard.

Well, Delta's making industry history again with the development of their Diamond™ Seal Technology. The Diamond™ Seal valve is leak proof, lead-free and will last ten times longer than the valve it's replacing. Here's a video that explains Diamond™ Seal Technology.





All in all it's a real winner and it's emblematic of the incredible things Delta Faucet has been up to in the last few years. Seriously, spend a little time on their website and see what Delta can do. Oh and fans of mid-century nostalgia will be happy to know that the ball handle is still available.

Touch this faucet!

Delta's using a new touch feature on some of their new kitchen faucets. This feature is what Delta calls Touch₂O™ technology and it's pretty slick. Here's a demo video from Delta that shows how it works. I'll explain how it works in a bit.

So what's going on here is that the faucet and handle have an incredibly faint electrical current running though them. The current's supplied by a battery pack that's installed below the faucet. The power level is so low that it's imperceptible and since it's coming from a battery pack and not household current, it is physically impossible to get a shock from this system. Please make a note of that.

The lynch pin of this low-level current system is a solenoid valve in the base of the faucet. You can see the solenoid in section B of the illustration below. It's the box the water supply line runs through. A solenoid valve is essentially an electronic switch, and in this case it works like a master switch. When someone turns on the faucet, the solenoid comes to life in a manner of speaking. With the water turned on from the source and the temperature set, all you need to do to is touch the faucet spout or handle and the water will turn off. Touch it again and the water turns back on. Since this is a battery-operated system, the batteries will need to be changed periodically. Delta took this into account and integrated an indicator into the faucet. At the bottom of the fixture, there's a small LED light that shines blue when the system's activated. When the batteries start to go low, that blue LED will flash red.

There's also an automatic, four-minute cut off built into this system. If the water's left running for four minutes with no activity, it will turn itself off. A further cool feature of this technology is that it never takes over the manual operation of the faucet. At any point, someone can turn on and off the faucet conventionally, at the lever.

The whole point of this kind of switching technology is to be able to avoid touching a faucet handle with the dreaded "chicken hands." It's a perfectly valid concern by the way, "chicken hands" are an obvious source of cross contamination woes. Anybody who's suffered a bout of salmonella poisoning will tell you that practicing sensible hygiene around food is a very good thing indeed. Touch₂O™ makes it easy to be smart and sensible and congratulations to Delta are in order. You can read more about Delta's new products on their website.

Finally, someone asked me on Friday if one of these faucets can be turned on accidentally by a meandering cat. The answer's an unequivocal no and a better question is why do you allow your cat climb around on your kitchen counters? Now the answer's a no because a human being has to turn on the faucet's handle from the get go. Unless you have a cat that can turn on a faucet manually, you're fine. Well, you're fine so far as the cat turning on the faucet goes. Clamoring cats bring with them a whole raft of other cross contamination woes, but I guess that's part of the joy of cat ownership. Right?