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You may find yourself standing in your kitchen one day and thinking, “This needs a little change.” How do you do this without replacing cabinets, changing countertops, or buying new appliances? A simple change may be enough to do a quick update – replace your kitchen cabinet handles. Even if you are making a big change–designing a kitchen in a brand-new house or taking on a complete remodel, the cabinet hardware you choose makes a statement.

With the wide range of options in kitchen cabinet handles, your can create many different looks. But take care with the installation. Installing the handles properly will give you look you want – a well-executed, integrated design for the room that is the gathering place in your home.

If you are adding knobs, your project is a little simpler than if you are adding handles. When you attach knobs, you make a single hole in each cabinet door and drawer face in your kitchen. But if you are using cabinet handles, the installation needs extra attention to detail to get you the perfect results you want.

Unless you are willing to fill the existing holes drilled for the handles, be sure that the drawer handles you select to replace the old ones will fit in the existing holes. Measure the distance between the two holes, or to be certain, bring an old handle to the home improvement store and compare them to the ones you are considering. In addition to the distance between the two bolts, consider the length of the bolts on the kitchen cabinet handles you select. Look for a perfect fit; a bolt that is too short or too long won’t attach securely to the cabinet doors and drawer fronts. Doing this prevents a mistake that costs you time on the job.

If you are replacing old kitchen handles, it’s as simple as removing all the old hardware and adding on the new. You have no holes to make, no concerns with drilling incorrectly, and no mess to clean up. It’s a quick and satisfying upgrade.

If you are adding cabinet handles to new cabinets, you need to plan your project. Work carefully, and you will enjoy the results.

A good thing about adding these handles to new cabinets is you can choose whatever size you want. Still, be sure that the bolts provided with the kitchen cabinet handles are long enough to fit through the face of the drawers and doors.

When it’s time to pull out your tools and install the new handles, consider investing in a template that helps you place the hardware perfectly. These templates are inexpensive, and they help you perfectly align that row or column of drawer handles. Sure, you can do the math, measure carefully, and get good results without using the template. But if you’ve got a large kitchen and dozens of pieces of hardware to install, consider using this time-saving tool.

Your kitchen cabinets are a big investment, so take some precautions before you drill. Even when you measure carefully, your eye is the best judge to see if the kitchen cabinet handles look right. Look at the alignment before you drill. If it doesn’t look right, adjust the placement as necessary to have the alignment look right.

Place a small square of masking tape over the spots where you will drill holes, and mark the exact drill spot with pencil. Slowly drilling through the masking tape helps prevent the finish from splintering and being damaged by the drill bit.

Author Jennifer Akre is an owner of a wide variety of online specialty shops including that offer both items and information on how you can easily furnish and decorate your space. Whether it is sofa end tables for your living room or tables for you newly remodeled home, there are many tips you can use to make any spot both functional and beautiful. Click today and indulge your senses.

Spring is a time for projects. Usually, people spent all winter looking around their home and finding lots of things they think they prefer to have looking another way. So, as soon as spring pops around, renovation projects get started. If you’re planning a renovation project, chances are you’ve got a list of all the new things you want to bring into your house to make it look fresher and more inviting than you think it does now. But what consideration have you put into the old things you’re going to be removing from your home? Most people just haul out of trashcan for any of the old things they’re removing from their home thinking that since they no longer want them, that no one else does either. But if you’re spring project includes redoing the cabinets and taking off all those old knobs and handles, you would be wrong.

When you look around your kitchen, you see knobs, handles and pulls that you’ve been using for a number of years. To you, they’re old and boring, worn and drab. That’s why you’re going to change them out for something fresher and newer, right? But that doesn’t mean they’re no longer useful. It just means they’re boring to you. As you take off those old hardware pieces take a good look at them. Are they still in good working order? Could they be used in someone else’s kitchen or bathroom and still have plenty of years of life in them? If the answer is yes you need to not throw these away. Instead give them a new life by giving them to a charity.

When a lot of people think of donating things to charity they think of donating large cash amounts or big things that can make a charity a lot of money. But most charities, especially those that run thrift stores, like all sorts of items. Useful items, such as your old cabinet knobs, are especially appreciated. After all, if you’re looking for new knobs for your cabinets to spruce things up, someone else is too. And while you’re hardware may be old to you, it may be a new and refreshing thing for someone else.

You should also take into account a lot of the people that are purchasing things at charity thrift stores are doing so because they’re trying to save money. Some of them are just frugal shoppers. But others are people who really don’t have a lot of extra money to spend but would still like to have nice things. By you donating your pulls and other cabinet hardware to a charity they can sell it at a more affordable price allowing that person to be able to afford the renovation project they’ve been hoping for.

So instead of just adding to the landfill in throwing out those old cabinet knobs and other hardware pieces, why not let them continue to live and brighten the life of someone else, as they did for you when you first got them. So once you finish your project, donate them to a charity and enjoy the feeling of helping out with a good cause.

Author Jennifer Akre is an owner of a wide variety of online specialty shops including that offer both items and information on how you can easily furnish and decorate your space. Whether it is cabinet hardware for your bathroom or cabinet knobs for your kitchen there are many tips you can use to make those spots both functional and beautiful. Click today and indulge your senses.