Saturday, January 10, 2009

Manhandled

I've spent a long time looking for hardware for the kitchen cabinets. My temporary electrical tape drawer pulls are not going to last much longer.

I had originally picked out these:
brushed stainless, narrow round stock arc

However they are out of scale with the wide stiles of the IKEA Adel doorfronts. Additionally, I couldn't find longer matching handles for my giant lower cabinet drawers, so I returned them. After a few trips into the valley and several wanderings through kitchen and hardware stores, I picked out something online. It's wider and comes in multiple lengths and I like it. It's essentially the same as my previous handle in shape, but is wider with a flat front. It's still my second choice if something goes wrong with my order.
brushed nickel, wider flat stock arc

Even with the multiple lenths of handles, I was having trouble figuring out where I'd put the handle on the pantry door. Then I remembered handles I'd seen at a (thankfully local) kitchen store. They were stick figures that looked like they were rock climbing. I went over to the store today and, yep, I still think they're "cooler 'n hooties" as mom likes to say. They do cost about 4X what I expected, so I'm just going to use a few of them as accent art and put normal handles on the bulk of the cabinets.

The lady helping me out at the store gave me another catalog to peruse with funky stuff and I found the "normal" handles in that book. I really like them because they have a square hole pattern that matches the etched pattern on the cabinet glass - and as it turns out, they match the bedroom carpet design too. These meet my "won't snag on passersby" criteria and really feel like the right solution.

craftsman brushed nickel with square cutouts

But the real fun is in Soko's "Manhandles" collection. Here's what I've decided on, shown in bronze, but ordered in Stainless aka silver with "shiny butt" finish.

The upper pantry cabinet will have this guy. He looks like he's climbing, but is looking down to check up on his climbing buddy.
Upper climbing man looking down

His climbing buddy on the big pantry door is not doing so well...
climber hanging on by one hand, dangling

And then because (a) I couldn't help myself and (b) because I will be using the trash door a lot and I didn't want the pull right at the top of the door because it's only attached to a drawer at the very bottom and flexes and (c) I can position this wherever I want it on the door, say lower... I'm putting this guy on the trash door.
climber scaling the cabinet

Of course, now I have to wait until they arrive... so I'll be tiling.

4 comments:

Janet Webb said...

Where do you find these great things? The dh and I are having the most involving discussion of 2009 ... in essence, should a kitchen be separate from a dining room OR are Great Rooms the way to go: I'm tending more CAL casual, dh, more formal option ... we shall see :)

p.s. My word verifier: stimpo (what does that mean?) LOL

CrankyOtter said...

Stimpo - I'm pretty sure you get to define what the verifier "words" mean when they choose you. This one though, is making me think Ren & Stimpy or Hippo.

As to great room or separated, pretty much all homes are done great room style. If you want a separate dining room, it's closed off rather than the kitchen. But I'd think about how you use your kitchen space vs. how you want to use it and decide that way.

I think I've literally been to 20 or more shops that do kitchen remodeling so I can search for ideas, styles, prices, pulls, cabinets, etc... One place had just about every kind of knob and pull, including the Haefele ones I thought I was going to get but I didn't see the manhandles there.

It helps to remember that if I mess up the holes for the handles, the doors are fairly inexpensive to replace. Which is what I might do when I eventually move - the artsy pulls go with me.

Anonymous said...

Those rock-climber handles are incredibly cool, though I have to ask if they make Womanhandles too and not just Manhandles.

CrankyOtter said...

"womanhandles" - not from soko. But in trying to find them online, I did run across these.
http://www.homedecorhardware.com/76-108.html

(Logynab = It's log, it's log, it's Logynab!)