I’m a big fan of paternity leave. It’s nice. The new baby is great! I honestly thought I’d have a little more free time to work on some home projects, but I’ve been swamped with school work and family baby time. No complaints! I did manage to knock a few items off my “to-do” list and I’ll be sharing them as we go.
In the meantime, we’ve got another built-in update. We last left off with the bottom and top cabinets installed. Now it’s time for some door hardware.
Instead of going out and buying some nice bling for this cabinet, we decided to just reuse the drawer pulls from our daughter’s Ikea Hemnes dresser. The knobs are dark, simple and look pretty good with the white cabinets. Since the cabinets don’t have any holes drilled for door pulls yet, I whipped up a simple, homemade jig for installing cabinet door pulls.
The jig is made from three small pieces of 1/2″ thick plywood. The wood is glued and nailed together. These are a cinch to make, can be done with just about any thickness of wood and are a perfect project to use up scrap wood.
To use the jig, you just put a mark on it where you want the door pulls to be located and then drill a hole. I wanted my pulls about an 1″ from the door edge and 2.75″ down from the top.
To select the drill bit size, I just pick a drill bit that is slightly bigger in diameter than the screw that comes with the drawer pull.
Then all you have to do is hold the jig over the corner of the door making sure it butts up against both edges of the jig.
Now you can either drill through the jig and the door or just mark the door with a pen and drill it separately. I prefer marking the door with a pen and then drilling it. It allows me to verify the exact hole placement more precisely.
Because the jig has a wide top and back, it can be turned around and used on both doors.
With both holes drilled, I just add my door pulls and we’re done.
You can actually buy cabinet door jigs, like this one, but it’s just as easy to make one yourself.
Next up will be the trim work we’ve added to make the cabinets look more “built-in” and less “oh those are just a couple of cabinets.”
Was going to try to post this last night, but then Lisa and I watched the first Hobbit film. I loved it (better than the first Lord of the Rings movie, IMHO). Lisa, not so much.
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