Tomorrow's gonna be hardware kind of day

I Googled my name today and this blog came up as the number two hit. Wow, that was fast! I've been at this for four days and it's showing up in the search engine already. I feel like a movie star.

Anyhow, I have an appointment tomorrow with a client to whom I sold ten rooms full of cabinetry in a house that's under construction. Her cabinetry is being delivered next week and we're getting together tomorrow to pick her hardware. This is pretty late in the game to be doing this, and she wants to keep this appointment to under two hours, so this will be a pretty rapid-fire operation.

The hardware we sell at the studio is by Schaub and Company, and a better collection I have yet to find. They are unbeatable at their price point. They make and sell really beautiful stuff, yet at the same time it's priced at what I would considered to be a good value. Few things break my heart the way cheap knobs and pulls do. That's never a problem with Schaub. They handle the middle of the market really well. Their metals are of a high quality and their finishes are both varied and well done. As they start moving into the higher end stuff, watch out. Who knew cabinet knobs could be this gorgeous?

You need real cloisonne? They got it. Ditto shell inlays, semi-precious stones and hand cast bronze. Again, really nice stuff. While nobody would ever call it inexpensive, compared to who they are going up against in the market, the stuff's a steal.

Shaub shows its collections well on their website too. http://www.schaubandcompany.com/

Anyhow, the first question that will come up in my appointment tomorrow is going to be what goes where? To which I will respond the way I always do: "There are no rules," I'll say.

What there are though are general guidelines. This woman's kitchen is rather large, so her room can handle an assortment of hardware. Most hardware comes in a suite. That means that there will be one or two knobs, one or two pulls and a cup pull that have the same color and style. They are meant to be mixed and matched. I tend to like a knob on a cabinet door and a handle on a drawer, but that's just me. Same as anything else though, what's important is that you introduce a pattern and stick to it. If doors are going to get knobs and drawers are going to get handles, then use cup pulls on big pot and pan drawers. If a kitchen has wide drawers, mixed with narrower ones, introduce a new rule. My general rule is that all drawers 24" wide or less get a single handle. Any drawer from 25" to 36" wide will get two handles. If you want to use bin pulls, or what we call cup pulls; introduce a new rule. A drawer between four and six inches tall will get a handle. If a drawer is taller than seven inches then it will get a cup pull. So there are some basic rules and I just made them up. Well, not exactly, they are the rules I like to see applied when I'm selecting hardware.