Kitchen Cabinetry

This has been a project that has ended up taking longer than expected. But what else is new? I have a friend from work who is an engineer, and he and his engineering buddies were talking about how they seemed to always be multiplying things by pi (you know, π). Anyway, he found that it always takes him about 3 times as long to do a project as he originally thinks it will take him, which I totally relate to. He calls it the "Pi effect," a term which I will now be using. 

So we love our house, but we don't love a few things about it - hence the projects. One of those things is the golden oak color of the woodwork. And there is a lot of it in the kitchen. Now this post isn't about how we've painted or stained our cabinets (that's yet to come), but we felt we could do something else to help us like our kitchen a little better. Hardware!

We've always wanted soft close cabinets and drawers. They're just so cool. So after a lot of research, I bought some soft close attachments for the cabinet hinges. These were made specially to attach to the type of hinges we already had, so putting them on only took about 15 minutes. Yay!

This is the hardware attachment 

This is how they close now

Then came the part that took forever. Drawer slides. These can be expensive, so after an extensive search, I found them online for about $10 a set (normally around $20 for the 22-inch length we needed). When I got them, I realized I needed a bracket that fit on the back of the cabinet to which I could attach the slides. Ordered those for about $15 (for all of them). When they got here, we realized they were the wrong size and contacted the company. They were very helpful and said they would send the right ones.

 

These are the old slides

On the drawer 

After two weeks, I contacted them again and asked if the correct brackets had gotten shipped (they hadn't, and so they shipped them). So five weeks after originally ordering, I had everything I needed. I took that week to install them (it took me about 20-30 min per drawer to install), and then realized one of the slides was broken. Back online. At this point I'm sure the support person is sick of me. She sends me a new slide, and now I finally have them all done!

The installation process can take a while when you're retrofitting
older cabinets - especially when you're trying to make sure they stay level.

The brackets I needed to attach the slides to the back of the cabinets

Broken slide

The new slides catch really well, which can make it a little difficult to open the drawers - remember what I said about making it look nice? We had planned to add cabinet pulls, so after multiple trips to multiple hardware stores (my life lately) we bought some. Of course, when I go to install them, I drill some holes in a drawer and realize the provided screws are too short. Back to the store, then an hour and a half of installing pulls.

But now they're all done, and they look great!

The drawers (with pulls attached) closing very nicely