Wish we'd known this for the beach house!

Hey guys!

Evaluating home purchases for their balance of form and function is pretty common for us to think about, but another factor has become louder and louder in our heads as we've picked things for the duplex: how easy is it to keep clean?

People expect a clean vacation rental, so we want to streamline the process for whoever's doing the cleaning that particular week (us or a professional). So one thing the beach house bathrooms have taught us is to AVOID CENTERSET FAUCETS. 

The vanity in the downstairs bathroom is centerset, meaning it has three separate holes but they're pretty close together (4 inches apart). After some hunting, we found this centerset faucet in polished nickel that was prettier looking than most of the others. I don't typically love having a big plate on the bottom of a faucet, but this one didn't bother me, and the price was right.

Well... after a year of living with it, this faucet is the bane of my cleaning existence. Everything is so cramped together that you basically need a Q-tip to get into every cranny. And there are so many flat surfaces and ridges for water to collect and dry on, that it pretty much always looks spotty and stained. You can even see it's starting to discolor at the base of the faucet...AFTER JUST A YEAR!

Now, it doesn't help that our kids like to play in this sink (it's constantly becoming a bubble bath for their little toys) so it does experience a bit more "wear and tear" than your average sink. But the lesson is not lost on us. 

So for the duplex we were sure to buy bathroom vanities that take a single-hole faucet or a widespread faucet (like this faucet below in the hall bathroom at the beach house). It just makes getting in and around the faucet MUCH easier to wipe things down - and there's not a big plate collecting drips and fingerprints that never looks clean. SO. MUCH. BETTER. 

In other news, here's what you may have missed recently:

Speaking of bathrooms, did you see this amazing tile makeover that a reader shared with us? This is just boring beige tile that she painted over. Yes, PAINTED! I still hard to believe it's the same room - and we love that it HOLDS UP! 

Click to see how she did it

On this week's podcast we're talking about how sharing our home online has affected our design choices (and if there were projects that were "just for the blog" that we might not have done otherwise). Spoiler alert: hindsight is 20/20.

Click to hear the episode

Last week we rounded up our favorite Black Friday sales - lots of which are still going strong this week - including things in our house & beach house that are marked waaaaay down, and what we snagged during the sale-iest of sales.

Click to see the deals

Our furniture line should be hitting Wayfair very very soon, and everyone who signed up for the first alert email at the bottom of this page will get notified before the rest of the internet - so be sure to sign up if you want to know first!

Click here to be alerted first

Hope you have an awesome week! 

xoxo, Sherry (& John)

Young House Love

John & Sherry Petersik

PO Box 36665, Richmond, VA 23235

www.younghouselove.com

 

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