The faucets that originally came with the boat were likely fairly standard marine faucets in the mid-eighties. However, we felt that the ergonomics could be improved somewhat.
In the forward head, the faucet on the sink had a single tap and separate knobs for hot and cold water. It was functional but aesthetically a little clunky. I unfortunately do not have before pictures.
In the aft cabin, the vanity sink had two separate faucets for hot and cold. This arrangement made the hot water tap almost useless, since hot water comes out of our water heater at near scalding temperatures.
We decided to replace both the forward head sink and aft cabin vanity faucets with the same faucet and liquid soap dispenser. The new faucet is not a marine faucet; it's a regular bathroom faucet. It has a lever to control temperature instead of knobs. We like the lever arrangement, as it eliminates fussing with the knobs to balance temperature. The faucet itself is fairly high off the sink, allowing plenty of room to fit hands or other large objects underneath. Adding the liquid soap dispenser let us hide the original hole in the marble from the extra tap in the vanity and the extra knob in the head. So far, we have not noticed any problems with using a non-marinized faucet.
We felt that the original galley faucet arrangement could also be made more functional. The original was a very low faucet (about two or three inches off the sink) with hot and cold knobs. The foot pump faucets for fresh and salt water were also very low slung. This made it difficult to get large pots into and out of the sink and to rinse them. As well, the dual knobs meant more water wastage when turning the water on and off for rinsing.
Again, in replacing the equipment, we went with regular household faucets. We replaced the foot pump faucets with tall bar faucets. The regular fresh water faucet got tossed in favour of a Delta faucet with a lever control and very high arch. It's so high that if we felt like it, we could put a bucket on the settee forward of the galley and fill it by swinging the faucet around. Now there are no more acrobatics when rinsing or filling large pots. The Delta also came with a spray nozzle. We had to drill a new hole in the marble countertop to incorporate the nozzle. The drilling was done using a drill hole saw adaptor kept constantly wet while cutting.
One of the major factors in deciding to use regular household equipment was the large selection available. In general, we felt that most marine faucets looked either too modern or too small on our vessel, or did not meet our requirements. We're very pleased with the result so far.