My attention was drawn back to this thread by someone who liked an earlier post here, and I wanted to update to say that I did move forward with a Brizo articulating faucet purchase in the end and received excellent pricing during a sale at Quality Bath online. The issue with the articulating faucets falling forward has been fixed, so unless you were to order really old stock from a warehouse somewhere, all the new faucets for the last few years feature the fixed joints, and of course, Brizo faucets come with Delta's lifetime warranty. I ordered two of the Brizo faucets in the Brilliance Stainless finish which is PVD stainless steel and among the most durable of finishes available for faucets on the market today. Anything with "Brilliance" in front of the name from Brizo means that it is PVD. Note that Brizo's chrome faucets are merely electroplated, so you'd need to choose a finish that specifies "Brilliance" to get the PVD finish. The articulating faucets from Brizo that feature covered hoses, which is the style I purchased, are all newer releases and so would have the fixed joints no matter where you ordered them. Quality Bath does not stock Brizo in house, so any order you placed from them would come directly from the factory. I'm really happy with this choice and look forward to many years of longevity from the Brizo articulating faucets.

I wish more people had weighed in on this question because it's time to pick out faucets. My husband likes the idea that it will stay where you put it, vs a pulldown faucet that you have to keep holding onto to point it where you want it to go. The cost has me shaking my head and thinking it isn't worth vs a regular pulldown.

StarCraft Custom Builders…thank you for the AMAZINGLY thorough faucet reviews you have on your website! I just read the one for California Faucets (took a little while, but totally worth the effort). I found this thread because I was searching to see what other people’s experiences have been with California Faucets in particular. I just placed a very large and very expensive fixtures order from them two days ago; today my contractor came by and as we were reviewing what I ordered he suddenly realized this is the same brand he’s been having major issues with in another remodel he’s doing. He said something like 4 out of 5 faucets had leakage problems and it took forever to get replacement parts sent out - and even then it didn’t fix the problems. (He said one of the faucets has had an ongoing problem for six months, yikes!!) I wanted to make sure the issues he was describing weren’t maybe due to my contractor and his experience with the product line, so I did some additional research and called my local Ferguson showroom. I have a long relationship with Ferguson and their customer service people confirmed that they currently have several open ticket issues for California Faucets which seem to point to manufacturing defects. My wall-mount lavatory and shower fixtures are going into marble slabs, so now I’m very, very concerned and thinking I should cancel this order ASAP rather than risk having problems with parts that are behind slabs and inaccessible for fixing if anything fails….. not to mention, I have to wait 12 weeks just to get the fixtures themselves. It looks like the info on your website is pretty recent, and it is a glowing review of both their quality and their service. I would like to believe that these are great faucets and I won’t have any problems but now I am definitely spooked. As someone else said, their finishes are beautiful and I really don’t want to scrap this whole thing and start over but I also don’t wanna have any nightmares a few weeks down the road. What to do…..what to do?!?!?!

"fused together" sounds bad. Maybe you need to start by replacing the shutoff valves? (I've found, more often than not, in old houses the shutoff valves are corroded and no longer functional. I just assume now tthey will need replacing and am pleasantly surprised when that turns out not to be the case.)