Kitchen cabinet hardware, part 1

By Liz on October 2, 2015

Over the course of September, I participated in The Kitchn Cure on The Kitchn website. It is an annual thing on The Kitchn and this year’s billing was:

“a 20-day journey of cleaning, organizing, and sitting with your kitchen, creating a more restful and mindful place to cook and eat.”

This year’s cure was led by Dana Velden**, a Zen priest, hence the “restful and mindful” verbage. Zen draws me and after reading the first day’s instruction to “sit and list”, I was in.

The “sit and list” was to be a quiet time in the kitchen and then a list of likes and dislikes … without overthinking. I love my kitchen and over the nine years I’ve been in this house, I have added the island, moved the comfy chair into that dark corner, edited counter top stuff and generally weeded out extraneous tools and dishes, appliances, spices and pantry goods. It is a pretty lean, mean kitchen geared to how and what I like to cook. My likes column was long and my dislikes was very short: cabinet hardware and light fixtures. And the funny thing was – sitting there doing that, after going back and forth about hardware off and on over the past several years, I suddenly had a picture in my mind’s eye of exactly what I wanted. I went to Home Depot online, found what I was thinking of and ordered it!

Nothing fancy – fairly plain, but in keeping with a “country kitchen”, i.e. not modern: black pulls and knobs. Done.

When they arrived, I liked them – a lot. Then, I’m not sure what happened except that I happened to hold one of the pulls vertical on a door and ultimately decided that instead of knobs on the doors I wanted the pulls.

Last weekend, I went off to Home Depot to return the knobs and get more pulls. I arranged all online so I could walk in to returns, then step over to will call and Bob’s your uncle, I’d be out of there. It didn’t work that way. Half an hour, 3 people and 2 phone calls to get the return processed … and THIS was with me bringing all paperwork as instructed. Then, the wrong pulls were in my will call order. When I went to get the pulls myself, the box was overflowing with pulls of all different finishes… Anyway, I came home deciding to install the drawer pulls and order the remaining to be shipped to my front door versus coming completely unglued in Home Depot.

That’s part of the reason why this is Part 1.

Installation!

I should have taken a before photo with absolutely no hardware, but I was so excited to get started this evening (Friday) that I had the first pull on before I took a photo. I was also going to set up the camera and get some action shots but I have no idea where the tripod is ???

Home Depot’s online store has handy videos for installing stuff that needs to be installed. I’d watched the video for the hardware and it showed a template and how easy the installation was with a template. I bought a template for $8.67. The template kit came with a template for drawers and a template for doors AND they also provided the correct drill bit in the package making the entire process very easy.

For drawers, the only measuring is to mark the center of the drawer. Then line up the center mark on the template…

…mark the holes for drilling and away you go!

The provided screws go from inside to outside and they ALL lined up perfectly with the hardware.

All of my kitchen drawers have pulls.

I’m usually pretty decisive, but I’ve dithered over this darn hardware for years and now changed my mind about 100 times over whether to put knobs or pulls on the doors. I looked at a LOT of online photos. It is done both ways. I don’t have a strong preference and I think either will look fine. And I have not yet decided what to order for the doors.

Thus ends, Kitchen Hardware, Part 1.

**Dana Velden is author of Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook . I read the book mornings as I was participating in The Kitchn Cure. It is a wonderful book and not just about the kitchen – much life wisdom for the thoughtful reader.