Kitchen, bath, laundry and utility faucets. Price in writing before the work begins.
Faucet Repair and Installation in Portland, OR
A drip in a 1910s bungalow is a different job than a drip in a house built last decade. The stems are often two-handle compression units, the lavatory may be drilled on spacing no current faucet matches, and the angle stop underneath hasn't moved since the house was plumbed. bluefrog Plumbing + Drain of Portland repairs and replaces faucets across the city, and we look at all of that before we give you a number, because in this housing stock the faucet itself is frequently the smaller half of the job.
Diagnosed first, priced second, and nothing starts until you approve it.
What Makes a Faucet Job Different in an Old Portland House
Start with the good news, because there's more of it than people expect. Portland's Bull Run supply is soft and low in mineral content, so faucets in this city aren't fighting the scale that shortens fixture life in mineral-heavy markets. Cartridges, stems and aerators here wear out from use rather than furring up, and rebuild parts for a surprising number of period fixtures are still manufactured and still stocked by local supply houses. A dripping two-handle compression faucet in a Buckman bungalow is often a stem and a seat rather than a new fixture. Repair is the right answer more often than not, and when it is, we'd rather do the repair than sell you a faucet.
Now the part that catches people out. In homes plumbed before about 1960 the supply arrives in galvanized steel and the angle stop under the sink is usually original. Soft water doesn't scale those valves up. It corrodes them from the inside instead, slowly, over decades. Turn one after all that time and the packing lets go, or the handle spins free, or the threaded nipple behind it shears. That's how a straightforward cartridge job turns into a stop valve and a nipple as well, and it's the most common reason a faucet call in this city ends up bigger than the one that got booked. We test the stops at the start of the visit and tell you what we found while your water is still on.
Fit is the third thing, and it's the reason a lot of faucets go back to the store. A 1920s bathroom may have a wall-mount lavatory faucet rather than a deck-mount one, which is a different rough-in and not something you solve on a hardware aisle. Old sinks come drilled single-hole, three-hole on four-inch centers, three-hole on eight-inch centers, and a fair number on spacing that matches nothing sold today, which is what deck plates and hole covers are for. Kitchen cabinets from that era leave almost no clearance for a basin wrench. Laundry and utility faucets usually sit in an unconditioned basement, which is where pipe splits first in a hard freeze.
It's worth having a faucet looked at when you notice:
- A drip that returns within weeks of a new washer or cartridge
- Handles that grind, stick, or won't shut the water off completely
- Water in the cabinet floor, or a stain on a ceiling below a bathroom
- Weak flow from one faucet while the rest of the house is fine
- A shutoff valve you can't turn, or one that seeps once you do
- A faucet base that wobbles, or a spout that swings loose at the body
Faucets are the most common thing we get called out for, and that volume is why we're careful about them rather than casual. A failed stop at one fixture is a part to replace. The same failure at three or four fixtures in the same house is usually the galvanized supply behind the valves rather than the valves themselves, and that's the point where whole-home repiping is worth pricing once instead of paying for the same repair over and over. We don't bring that up unprompted on a call about a drip, but if it's what we're seeing, we'll tell you.
We Check What Is Behind the Faucet Before We Price the Faucet
Root cause first, then the price, and it's your call either way.
The shutoff comes first, and it comes first on purpose
Before we touch the fixture we test the angle stops, because in an older Portland house the stop is usually what decides whether the job stays small. If a stop is seized, or the nipple behind it has corroded thin, you hear it right then, see the valve, and get the revised price before anything comes apart. Nobody enjoys being told a small job got bigger. It's still better to hear it at the start, from somebody pointing a flashlight at the valve, than at the end with the water off.
Who is under your sink while you decide
If the stems rebuild and the seats are clean, we rebuild them and you keep a fixture that suits the house. If the body is worn through, the parts aren't made anymore, or you've already paid to fix this faucet twice, we say so and quote the replacement. Either way that conversation happens with somebody kneeling in your kitchen cabinet, which is a moment when a homeowner is easy to lean on. We don't do that, and if the answer is that this faucet has another year left in it, you'll hear that too. bluefrog Plumbing + Drain of Portland is woman-owned and LGBTQ-owned and licensed and insured in Oregon under CCB #255748, established in 2025 with more than 1,000 completed projects behind the team. The rest of the pillar sits on our fixture repair and installation page, and everything else we do in Portland is one level above that.
Faucet Work We Do Across Portland
Kitchen, bath, laundry, and the ones out on the wall of the house.
Kitchen Faucets
Kitchen faucets take more use than anything else in the house, and in an old Portland kitchen they take it from inside a cabinet with barely room for a forearm. We repair drips, stiff handles, failed cartridges, leaking spray hoses and spouts gone loose at the base, and we replace units where the parts are gone or the body is worn through. Switching to a pull-down or a single-handle model means confirming the hole count and spacing on your sink first, so you're not left with a fixture that doesn't sit right on a sink drilled ninety years ago.
Bathroom and Lavatory Faucets
The three-piece bathrooms in Portland's pre-war houses were built around fixtures that are now roughly a century old, and plenty of them still work. We rebuild two-handle lav faucets, replace stems and dress or replace seats where parts exist, and install new fixtures that fit the sink you actually have. Deck-mount and wall-mount are different jobs, and a wall-mount valve in an original tiled wall needs a conversation about access before anyone starts.
Laundry, Utility, and Outdoor Faucets
Basement laundry sinks, utility faucets, washing machine valves, and the hose bibs on the outside wall. Nobody looks at these until they fail, and in Portland they usually fail for one of two reasons: age, or a hard-freeze event finding an unconditioned basement or an exposed crawlspace line. A split bib doesn't show anything while it's still frozen. You find out the first warm week, when the water goes back on and comes out inside the wall instead. We replace split bibs and worn laundry valves and add shutoffs where a previous owner never put one.
The honest version, told before the water goes off.
Why a Small Faucet Job Sometimes Grows
Here's the situation we run into constantly in Portland's older neighborhoods. You call about a drip. The faucet itself is a clean repair. But to work on it the water under the sink has to shut off, and that stop hasn't moved since the house was plumbed. It seizes, or it turns and then won't seal, or the galvanized nipple it threads onto gives way in your hand. Now the job includes a stop valve, sometimes a nipple, and occasionally a trip out to the main shutoff.
We handle that by testing the stops at the start, telling you what we found, and giving you the full price before we go on. If the stops are sound, the job stays small and cheap and we're glad about it. If they're not, you hear it from someone standing next to the valve rather than in a phone call an hour later. This isn't a rare event. It comes up most weeks.
The same vintage of valve sits behind every toilet in the house, which is why a toilet repair or replacement in one of these places grows the same way for the same reason. If we're already on site, ask us to look at those stops while we're there, so you know what's under the fixture before one of them fails
People often pick a faucet before they call, and it usually works out. When it doesn't, the reason is almost always fit rather than quality. A three-hole sink and a single-hole faucet need a deck plate. Eight-inch widespread trim doesn't go into four-inch centers. A tall gooseneck spout looks right in the box and then clears the basin by an inch and splashes every time you run it. And a wall-mount setup can't become a deck-mount one without real work behind the wall.
Portland's water works in your favor on this decision. Soft, low-mineral Bull Run supply means cartridges and aerators here aren't being destroyed by scale, so a well-built fixture here tends to last. What that argues for is a mid-range faucet with parts you can still buy in five years, rather than a designer unit built around a proprietary cartridge nobody stocks. Ask us before you order and we'll tell you what we've had trouble sourcing parts for and what we haven't.
We work the whole city, though most days start close to the shop in the bungalows and foursquares of Southeast Portland and run out toward the post-war stock further east. Pick a time that works for you with the link below, or call (503) 389-8426 and tell us what the faucet is doing.
Commonly asked questions and answers about faucets in Portland
Portland Faucet Repair FAQsUsually because the seat is worn rather than the washer. In a two-handle compression faucet the washer presses down onto a brass seat, and after decades that seat gets pitted or grooved. A new washer against a bad seat drips again within weeks. The fix is to dress or replace the seat as well, and if the stem is worn too, or it's a stem nobody makes anymore, replacing the faucet is often the better value. We look at the seat and the stem both before we quote anything.
More often than you'd think. Cartridges, stems and rebuild kits for a great many fixtures in Portland's pre-1940 homes are still manufactured, and local supply houses carry a surprising range of them. That's a real advantage here, because soft Bull Run water means the fixture body itself is usually still sound. We identify the exact fixture on site and tell you honestly whether parts exist. If they don't, we say so rather than fitting something approximate that fails in six months.
Because in a home plumbed before about 1960 the angle stop is frequently original and frequently seized. If it won't close, or the galvanized nipple behind it is corroded through, the faucet repair becomes a valve replacement too. We test it at the start of the visit so the real price arrives upfront rather than after the water is already off. One failed stop is just a failed stop. When it happens at three or four fixtures in the same house, the valves aren't the problem and a full repipe is worth pricing.
It depends on the sink's hole count and spacing. Old Portland lavatories come as single-hole, three-hole on four-inch centers, three-hole on eight-inch centers, and occasionally on spacing that matches nothing sold today. Some 1920s bathrooms use wall-mount faucets rather than deck-mount, which is a different rough-in entirely. Measure before you buy, or send us a photo and a tape-measure reading, and you won't end up returning a fixture.
Not the way it does in mineral-heavy parts of the country. The Bull Run supply is soft and low in minerals, so faucets here aren't failing from scale in the cartridge or the aerator, and nobody on a city meter needs a softener. What wears fixtures out here is ordinary use and slow corrosion of old brass and galvanized. That's easier on the faucet than it is on the shutoff underneath it, which is why we look at both while we're under there.