Ah the bittersweet first-world torment of finding the perfect shower and sink fixture.
Looking for a well-styled inexpensive faucet that’s guaranteed to break immediately or leak within a year? Amazon is your place.
How about a reliable brand with awful styling for an arguably acceptable price? Either big box store can help you there. (I don’t care if no-spot stainless literally cleans itself it’s still an aesthetic crime)
Perhaps a reasonably styled reliable faucet that will set you back nearly the price of a used car? The fancy showrooms in the bourgeoisie part of town can surely oblige.
Or maybe you swing towards vintage brass and chrome like we do, in which case there is an inverse relationship between how much you are willing to spend and how long it will take you to find that perfect fixture. Not to mention that if you’re serious salvage hounds like we are it just feels wrong to pay a vintage dealer to steal the fun of rescuing your treasure from the dilapidated building or swashbuckling your foes for it at an estate sale.
Of course even when you do finally find that perfect 1930s faucet or showerhead at a garage sale for five bucks, there are the sacrifices of lead exposure, water-wasting flow rates, and a significantly less enjoyable shower and dishwashing experience that must be made.
It seems like every possible choice comes with a downside that we can’t live with, so yet again we come home empty handed. The only treasure today was a priceless one-liner served up dry by Liz.
Upon encountering a particularly egregious copper bathtub in one of the upscale stores, she declared: “This is where we bathe in the blood of the proletariat.”
-Brian
