Recently our kitchen was renovated and we now have a kitchen sink with a separate pull-up sprayer. Most of the time when I pull up on the sprayer there is resistance when the hose is about halfway up. I checked under the sink and there nothing that the hose is getting caught on. The odd thing is that often after using the sprayer a couple of times while doing dishes it will suddenly lift up smoothly all the way without any resistance. What could explain this behavior?
Ah! it looks from those excellent photos that when the hose is being pulled, it catches on the handle of a shutoff valve at the end of the blue pipe.
If that is the cause of the issue, you could make a smooth ramp around the valve, top to bottom with easily-removed plastic food wrap or wide tape, so that the hose slips past easily.
Of course, as @dandavis states, it could be the cold pipe is stiff.
I second the cold v warmed-up hose liklihood. Additionally, I've found that rubbing some silicone spray on the full length of my hose makes it more cooperative when cold since it does have to pass thru it's own fixture / guide, but that only works temporarily. Maybe there's a better form of lubricant, or maybe lubricating the fixture / guide would work better.
