Moen Align: The Faucet I Never Knew I Always Wanted

A huge thanks to Moen for providing the faucet for our kitchen renovation. My favorable opinion of gorgeous, high-quality faucets is 100% my own. 🙂 For more information, see my disclosures here.

I've often talked about Donnie's gift giving abilities on the blog. He's kind of a gift giving master. He always knows everything about the coolest gadgets and gizmos before anyone else has ever even heard of them, so when it comes time to give a gift, he has already found the perfect item for each person on his list. His gifts are never generic or thrown together, but always well thought-out and meaningful for the recipient, and usually something they wouldn't have thought to ask for themselves. He's that good.

When it came time to start looking for a new kitchen faucet, I had no idea what I was in for. I thought a faucet was just a faucet-- they're all the same, right? They all run water into your sink, help wash your dishes, or provide you with a drink when you're thirsty. And then I stumbled upon the Moen Align, our future faucet. And like Donnie's gifts, it was that thing I never even knew I always wanted. It's that good.

But before I get into all of the features, let me start this story at the beginning, with our old faucet... our old, ugly, and kind of gross faucet. This is what had been in our kitchen since the day we moved in (and probably since our house was built in the '80s):

It leaked, the finish was coming off, and no matter how often I cleaned it, there always seemed to be this layer of grime that would build up right around the rim. Ick. (Also that fruit backsplash... I just can't. :-/ )

So we set out to find our new faucet, and came across the Moen Align. Both Donnie and I loved it as soon as we saw it. It was sleek, shiny, and would be the perfect little piece of *bling* for our new kitchen design. It also had some bonus bells and whistles that we thought were awesome-- MotionSense hands-free technology, anyone?!

We placed our order, and when the faucet arrived at our door, we opened the box and were met with this:

Wowza. This was a whole different ballgame than our last faucet. (Thank goodness!) Donnie set about to install it and, well, I'll let him tell it...

I admit, I was a bit intimidated when I first opened the box to our new Moen Align kitchen faucet. I knew this was a high-end faucet with sensors and some electronic components but I wasn’t quite prepared to see how many parts were included in the box.

The first thing I did was pick up the spot resistant stainless faucet. It just felt like quality. Not only heavy and solid feeling, but the finish seemed absolutely perfect. It’s the nicest faucet I have ever seen and a perfect modern look for our kitchen reno.

I wanted to make sure I had a good understanding of how everything worked before I started the installation, so I planned on spending a half hour or so reading through the instructions. In reality, it only took a few minutes to get an understanding and start the installation. Very well written instructions — Moen spent some time making these easily understandable. My initial intimidation was starting to disappear.

After our countertop installation, I made sure not to anchor the sink. I thought being able to remove the ceramic bowl would be helpful for the faucet installation. I lifted the sink out of the cabinet and set it on the countertop with a thin piece of wood in between to protect the quartz surface. Then it was just a matter following the Moen instructions step-by-step.

Everything above the sink comes pre-assembled for the most part. I attached a few clamps, seals, and fed the pull-down hose through the faucet body, and I was ready to start work on the under-sink components.

One of the faucet parts is a black box with some electronic sensor components as well as regulators for the hot and cold water. With some of my existing drain pipes under the sink I was worried that this little black box would not fit. Fortunately, Moen designed the unit to swivel so it was easy to find a location that worked for my specific plumbing situation. They thought of everything!

I had my hot and cold water supply all ready to go prior to installation. I used some teflon tape and threaded on the provided steel braided lines. These two lines then snap directly into the black regulator box. No complicated hookup!

To supply power to the electronic sensors, I had two options: 1) wired direct electrical hookup or 2) battery box with six provided AA batteries. Although I had an existing electrical hookup to provide power to my disposal, I opted for the even easier battery option. I suspect the batteries will last a while with the low power requirements of the two faucet sensors. If not, I can also go back and hard wire in electricity. The battery pack was easily installed on the interior side of my sink cabinet with velcro and a single screw.

I have to admit that before starting the Moen Align installation, I was intimidated. I’m not a master plumber, and I have to take my time and read everything. The number of parts and complexity of the box looked overwhelming, but fortunately, I soon found out that I had nothing to worry about. It turned out to be an easy installation that took no more than 30 minutes. Everything went as planned, there were no surprises, the faucet functions perfectly, and the design is beautiful.

So once Donnie had installed our brand new beautiful faucet, it was finally time to put it to work! When I first started writing this post, I was trying to show and explain all of the awesome features with pictures, but I quickly realized that a video would show everything so much more clearly. {And I don't get in front of a camera very often, so you know I must love this faucet! 😉 } I put together a little 2-minute video, just to make it easier to get an idea of everything this baby can do. Check it out:

SO COOL, right?! I am always looking for excuses to go into the kitchen and play around with it! {As are the Cs! 🙂 } We all love that the Align is both beautiful and oh-so-functional, and it was the absolute perfect addition to our kitchen!

And speaking of kitchen progress, we started in on the backsplash tile this weekend, which made the faucet shine even more! Here's a little sneak peek:

LOVE! And the before and after shots are unbelievable!

It's hard to believe that's the same kitchen! If your kitchen could use a little transformation too, be sure to pop over to Moen's site and take a peek at all of their pretty faucet options-- they're amazing!

I'm thrilled with how the kitchen progress is coming along so far-- we're plugging away at it every day! We will have many more updates coming soon, so be sure to stick around and follow along! Have a wonderful week!

A huge thanks to Moen for providing the faucet for our kitchen renovation. My favorable opinion of gorgeous, high-quality faucets is 100% my own. 🙂 For more information, see my disclosures here.