When you're "old"- you spend weekends doing this...

When you're "old & married," you find yourself doing fun things on the weekend like wandering around home improvement stores for 2 hours, discussing & dreaming of future home improvement projects. Such an exciting life... :-)

One home improvement project we have been debating since we moved into the house nearly 2 years ago is the subject of "kitchen cabinet hardware." The prior homeowners had updated the cabinets in the kitchen with new painted wood doors & drawer fronts.  They look nice, however there weren't any handles or knobs on them, which is really frustrating when your fingers are grubby from cooking & you need something out of the cabinet.  We initially delayed purchasing & installing hardware because the status of a kitchen island was still in limbo. I didn't want to get hardware for the cabinets, not knowing if we would be buying a prefab island with hardware that would be hard to match.

When my parents bought us an amazing custom island last summer we could have installed hardware on all of our cabinets, but then it became an issue of finding hardware we liked.

When we were at IKEA in December, we finally settled on the hardware.  It's similar to a style we liked in a hardware store, except the hardware was half the price per piece at IKEA. The hilarious thing is that we had forgotten the tally of how many knobs & pulls we needed at home...so we spent a good 20 minutes in IKEA diagramming our kitchen, referencing photos on our phones, etc to verify our count. Fun times.

We purchased the hardware in early December and then it sat in the bag until this past weekend.  It wasn't that we didn't have time to install it before now, it's because with any project like this, I have to sit on it for several weeks before I commit to having holes drilled in our possessions. Sometimes I have a fear of change...

Luckily I have a husband who is very detail oriented when it comes to projects like this. Because of his awesome "measure 3 times, drill once" skills, we now have a more user-friendly & polished looking kitchen.

Now for some pictures & tips...

Overhead Cabinet Example- Before

Overhead Cabinet Example- After

Base Cabinet Example- Before

Base Cabinet Example- After (I'm still not 100% sold on this
style of pull on our funky little drawers [which shouldn't have the
decorative trim]...but whatever, the holes are now there :-) )

Island- Before

Island- After

My rock star hubster

Masking tape on the cabinet doors gives an easy place to
mark where to drill & helps contain the sawdust & helps
keep the wood from splintering.

Buy a cabinet template to help you make sure all of your
knobs & pulls are mounted in the same place.

Since we had to pull everything out of the island drawers,
I took that opportunity to alphabetically organize my spice
drawer.  OCD Love.