Has your old kitchen faucet seen better days? Whether yours is leaking water or is simply outdated, upgrading a kitchen faucet is among the most popular do-it-yourself projects in a full kitchen renovation.

It’s also usually an affordable way to improve the convenience and functionality of your kitchen. Depending on the number of holes and the style of your kitchen sink, the process will vary in difficulty.

Before installing a new kitchen faucet, be sure to go underneath your kitchen sink and check how many holes your existing sink uses. While a one-hole faucet can work in a 2-hole sink, the same won’t be true for a 2 or 3-hole faucet in a one-hole sink. 

Clear out all of the products and supplies under the sink. If you have an electrical outlet beneath your sink, turn off power to it before you remove the old faucet.

Before the work can start in earnest, you’ll have to shut off the water to the existing faucet. 

Most of the time this is accomplished by simply twisting On/Off valves located on the hot and cold water supply lines to “OFF,” using just your fingers.

Once the water is off, removing the old faucet is a matter of loosening the nuts that hold it in place and then lifting the faucet out of the holes. 

If the nuts holding the faucet in place are stuck or rusted, you can brush away as much corrosion as possible with a wire brush and then spray penetration oil on the nuts to help dissolve the corrosion. It can take from 30 minutes to overnight for the oil to work. 

If you try loosening the nuts again and they still won’t turn, they’ll have to be cut off with a reciprocating saw or a hacksaw. If this sounds daunting, feel free to call us and have one our qualified handymen come out and help!

Before you head to the home improvement center to buy a faucet based simply on its shape and finish, get to know your current sink hardware. 

The best way to do so is to remove it. With the old faucet removed, you can make note of the number of holes in the sink and the distance between the center of the left-most hole to the center of the hole on the far right. 

This is known as measuring “On Center” and is the industry standard for measuring sinks’ holes. The actual diameter of the holes doesn’t matter. Installation of the replacement faucet will go the smoothest when you select one that fits the same hole configuration.

A typical, two-handle kitchen faucet installs over a set of three holes, with the two outside holes being eight inches apart. Updating to a stylish single-handle faucet that requires only one hole to install when you have three is still possible. 

For this, you’d need to purchase a separate base plate, called an “escutcheon plate,” that matches the finish of the new faucet and extends long enough to cover up the unused holes.