I’ll be honest with you, I put off doing anything about our kitchen tap for the guts of three years. It was one of those jobs that lived rent-free at the bottom of the to-do list, somewhere between cleaning out the hot press and finally figuring out what that mystery key on the windowsill opens. The tap worked, sort of. It wheezed a bit. The handle had gone wobbly. And washing a big roasting tray meant balancing it on its side and praying the water reached the corners. Grand altogether, until it wasn’t.
The push to do something came on a wet Tuesday in February when I was trying to rinse a colander of spuds and water sprayed everywhere except where I needed it. My wife looked over from the table and said, in that tone every Irish husband knows well, “Right, that’s it now.” Fair enough.
The Rabbit Hole of Tap Shopping
If you’ve never gone shopping for a kitchen tap, let me save you a few hours. There are dozens of them. Mixers, monobloc, bridge, pillar, swan-neck, you name it. After a fair bit of reading and a couple of trips into showrooms in Dublin, I narrowed it down to one feature I really wanted, the pull-out spray hose. The kind where you can yank the head out and direct the water wherever you need it. Game changer for filling pots on the hob, rinsing veg, and giving the sink itself a proper wash down at the end of the night.
I ended up reading a brilliant little guide on the difference between pull-out and pull-down models, and it cleared up a lot of my confusion. If you’re stuck choosing, have a read of this piece on the Kitchen Tap With Pull Out Spray, it walks you through the practical differences without trying to flog you anything you don’t need. Useful stuff, especially if you’ve a smaller Irish kitchen where space matters and you don’t want a big tall yoke towering over the worktop.
Going With Matt Black (and Not Regretting It)
Now, the next bit of the decision was the finish. Chrome is grand, classic, hard to go wrong. But our kitchen has dark grey shaker presses and a bit of brass on the handles, and chrome would have looked a bit lost. I’d seen matt black taps in a few houses over the last while and always thought they looked the part, modern without being cold, statement without being shouty.
After a fair amount of comparing, I went with a Black Pull Out Kitchen Tap from an Irish supplier, and I have to say, six months in, no regrets. The finish hasn’t marked, even with hard water (and if you’re in parts of Leinster or Galway you’ll know what I mean about hard water). The pull-out spray glides smooth, snaps back into place with a satisfying little click, and the single lever means I can turn it on with the back of my wrist when my hands are covered in flour or chicken juice.
A Few Bits I Learned Along the Way
Measure twice, order once. I nearly bought a tap that wouldn’t have cleared the windowsill behind our sink. Always check the height and the spout reach before you part with your money.
Mind the water pressure. Some pull-out taps need decent pressure to work properly. If you’re on a private well or a rural supply, ring the supplier and ask. Most Irish ones are sound about answering questions over the phone.
Don’t skimp on the install. I had a plumber out for an hour, cost me less than a hundred quid, and he spotted a leak under the sink that had nothing to do with the tap. Worth every cent.
Get one with a proper warranty. Five years minimum. Anything less and you’re being sold short.
The Verdict
Look, a tap is a tap. But it’s also the thing you use about forty times a day without thinking, and when you finally get a good one, you notice. Cooking is a bit easier. Cleaning is faster. The kitchen feels a small bit more finished. And every now and then, when I’m rinsing a few mugs and the spray hose makes short work of the lot, I think to myself, fair play to whoever invented this.
If you’re toying with the idea of upgrading yours, my advice is don’t dither the way I did. A few hours of research, a decent budget, and a phone call to a proper Irish supplier and you’ll be sorted. Your future self, standing at the sink at half nine on a Wednesday night, will thank you.
