Blinging out the cabinets

Over a year ago, I bought hardware for my cabinets. And I finally installed it over the past couple of weekends. Why did it take so long? Remember, it's my house...every project I tackle has some sort of story to go with it :)

The Hardware Saga:

I decided I wanted stainless steel bars for my cabinet hardware. Of course I would pick a pricey look...after pricing things out, there was no way I was going to spend so much money just for cabinet hardware. Enter IKEA. For literally a third of the cost of the hardware online or at local hardware stores, I picked up a blue bag full of LANSA drawer pulls. IKEA didn't carry the tiny ones I needed, but lo and behold, Target happened to have a package of four (which is what I needed) on clearance and I quickly snapped those up!

I measured and drilled the holes for one drawer and went to mount the hardware...and discovered that the screws were too short.

You see, IKEA drawers are comprised of only drawer box, whereas my cabinets had the drawer box PLUS a drawer front...so the IKEA screws were about 1/2" short. And it turns out, the IKEA hardware is metric, since it is an overseas company. And you can't buy longer screws. Anywhere. Believe me. A ridiculous amount of research (and many exasperated snorts of "why isn't everything in metric!?) is behind that conclusion. On to plan B for the drawers. Thankfully, the screws were sufficiently long for the cabinet doors (sneak peek below)

The tools necessary for the project (minus the iron of course :) ). And tunes, gotta have tunes. Thank you Mumford and Sons. Your Babel album is good work music.

A trick I picked up from my favorite DIY blog, painters tape captures the sawdust and makes cleanup much easier. I only taped a few doors (this one is over the stove/oven and I didn't want to clean up that mess) since the mess on the floor was easy to sweep up

Plan B:

I bought a 1/2" bore drill bit and preceded to bore two holes in each drawer so I could countersink the IKEA screws. 

About to bore...

Wahoo!!!

Yay it worked! The screw about to be countersunk...

The Finished Product:

Yeah, there's one missing, I miscounted and need to get one more pack of hardware...

I really like the finished look the hardware gives the cabinets. I'm not a fan of the cabinet color...I'd prefer white. But oak-y color they will stay. Next up is replacing the kitchen tile. It's going to be a shade lighter or so than the ceramic tile on the backsplash. One more light fixture and that will wrap up all the kitchen upgrades I plan to do. Slowly but surely checking off that to-do list!