Every time I share about this on Instagram, I always see a couple of DMs that ask me, “Why do you have two faucets?” Drinking tap water is not recommended where we live, so we have a reverse osmosis faucet. As you can see, the stainless steel faucet that it comes with doesn’t match any of our kitchen fixtures, so we purchased an unlacquered brass RO faucet off of Etsy and crossed our fingers that we could figure out the plumbing. We knew it could be a bit tricky since we’d be going from American fittings to a European faucet, but the look was worth the challenge to us.
Here’s what we did to modify the plumbing:
1. Cut a hole in the countertop
In order to install the faucet, we first had to use a hole saw to cut a larger hole in the countertop. The new faucet had a larger base than the old one. Jake did this by using a 1 1/4 inch diamond hole saw bit on the drill.
*As a note, make sure to wear safety equipment and get the countertop wet to minimize dust.
2. Figure out the plumbing connections.
Next, we had to figure out the plumbing. Typically, this is a fairly easy and seamless process but since the faucet had different hookups than before, we had to get a little creative. This took two trips to Home Depot, some failed attempts, and a lot of patience.
Our goal was to figure out how to go from 1/4″ RO tubing to a 1/2″ faucet supply line. Eventually, we were able to figure out the right connections in order to have no leaks:
from the top down:
flexible supply line (attached to the faucet) 1/2″
FIP brass union 1/2″
brass nipple 1/2″
FIP brass reducing coupling 1/4″ x 1/2″
brass nipple 1/4″
push-to-connect x 1/4″ FIP
reverse osmosis tubing
I know that when it comes to plumbing, the less connections, the better. If you have any suggestions for how I could simplify this, please let me know in the comments below!
3. Enjoy
Now we are able to enjoy an RO faucet that matches the rest of our kitchen. Here are all the brass fixtures we’ve put in over the last few weeks:
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