Kitchen cabinet hardware

Someday soon I promise I'll start writing posts written in the present tense.  I think I only have one more major project to update on before I get there, and it's my kitchen cabinet hardware.  Here was my kitchen (it has since been tidied up).

It had these little silver nickel knobs on all the cabinets, which were fine, but I just felt like the whole room was in need of an update.  Nothing's TERRIBLE, it's all just a little un-modern-looking to me.

I've got many big plans for the kitchen, but because of the budget I decided to start with a small and fairly simple one: updating the hardware.  For some reason I really felt like I wanted handles instead of knobs, so this necessitated some drilling of new holes in all the cabinets.  Kind of a scary task for a DIY novice such as myself who has never even handled a drill, let alone put big ol' holes in all her kitchen storage.

Luckily, I know Pat Smith, my personal home improvement guru, who took time on a Saturday morning to not only lend me his drill, teach me how to use it, but also made me a template so that I could accurately drill the holes the correct distance from the existing hole.  God bless you, Pat Smith, and also his lovely wife Megan for letting me borrow him for the morning.

Still feeling a little freaked out, I went home, started drilling on some inconspicuous cabinets, and miracle of miracles, everything went fine.  I even ended up making a template for myself to use when doing the drawers!  I wish I had taken some pictures while it was in process, but sorry, all I got are the after shots:

Since the drawers required drilling two new holes instead of just one, I had to fill in the old holes with wood putty, another new skill I just learned.  You can still a little bit see the difference in color where the old holes were,  but it's not too obvious, and I'm still planning to paint the cabinets eventually, so when that happens it'll be totally moot.

All in all, I have to say I'm pretty proud of the way this turned out.  Especially since I did it myself.  If you look realllllllllllllllllllllly closely at a couple of them they might look not quite exact, but I don't think the average bear will ever notice and I'm certainly not going to lie awake at night worrying about it.

With that, I think I'm caught up on past projects, and will now launch boldly into the future with new projects!