Cheap Fixes: Next up, new hardware

OK, I know I keep promising to write about how to paint cabinetry but I consider that major surgery and before we get to that point, there may be a less invasive option around. In fact I know there is and it's one you can accomplish in time for Christmas.

A lot of times, you can give your existing kitchen a new lease on life (or at least a stay of execution) by following my step one, scrub and purge; and then following it up with my step two, replacing the hardware.

In cabinet land, when we talk about hardware we mean knobs and pulls. I can supplement my income pretty well by selling gorgeous and spendy hardware from a couple of hardware foundries around the US. Good hardware is expensive for a reason. And one of the reasons is that you won't be replacing it any time soon. If you don't know what constitutes good hardware, do yourself a favor and don't learn until you're ready to spring for the good stuff. The thrill of a cheap fix is lost completely when you know you're short-changing yourself.

With that said, I think My favorite source for inexpensive cabinet hardware is an online hardware store called Lee Valley Hardware. Lee Valley has to have the largest selection and the best prices I've ever seen for this stuff. Lee Valley sells knock offs of the good stuff and they price it accordingly. Unlike a couple of home centers I know.

Anyhow, when you're replacing your hardware you have to match exactly the holes that have already been drilled in your cabinet doors and drawer fronts. Knobs are easy; a hole is a hole, right? That's usually true. Most knobs have a standard mounting bolt and you can swap them out without too much trouble.

Handles are a whole other animal though. The spread of a handle is the distance between the center point of the first hole and the center point of the second hole. When you're buying new handles, you must match that dimension exactly. To complicate matters further, most cheap stuff is imported from all over the world and the rest of the world uses the metric system. If you go through Lee Valley's handle selections, you'll see that about half of them are in metric dimensions.

Worldwide Metric has a great metric system calculator on their website. It will come in handy believe me.

Scattered across this page today are some of the selections from Lee Valley. There's a fair amount of dreck on that site, but there are enough gems to make it worthwhile to spend some time with them. Everything I'm showing here today has a retail price range between $3 and $7 apiece. Now that's what I call a cheap fix!

Cheap Fixes: First up, clean and purge!

OK, for the first in my series on cheap fixes I'm going to start with the cheapest thing I can think of to give your kitchen a face lift: Clean it. I'm not talking about a cursory swipe with a wet sponge either. I mean a spend-the-whole-day-Saturday scrub and purge. I do this once a year or so and it gives me a lift that lasts for weeks, as sick as that sounds.

I hear about people's renovation fantasies all day long. "If I only had X and Y then I'd keep my house clean, my kids wouldn't ignore me, I'd pay my bills on time and I'd have a happy marriage." Newsflash: life doesn't work that way. The events of your life rush in to fill the spaces you leave for them. An extension of that, I'm convinced, is the periodic house purge. Get rid of your crap and clean things up and the first of the fantasies I just listed will become a real thing. It's magic!

Many people think they don't have enough storage space, but the real problem is that they have too much stuff. Kitchen cabinets are a perfect place to hoard lidless Tupperware containers and useless kitchen gadgets. It's time for a purge.

Pour a bucket of hot water, add a good splash of Ammonia and grab a rag. As a technical aside, when you're cleaning things like kitchen cabinets, you need to use a cleaner that won't leave a residue. Parson's Clear, Non-sudsing Ammonia is the ultimate cleaner and at about a buck a bottle there is nothing better to use. That's coming from a pro too. Don't believe the hype surrounding overpriced cleaning products. The fewer ingredients involved, the better off you are and nothing cleans as well or smells as clean as Ammonia. Your grandmother was right. Or at least my gandmother was.

Start with one cabinet and empty it. Wipe it out. Only put back the things that you use. That sounds pretty elementary, but most people need to be forced to do this sort of thing. Me included. I have in me the hoarding instincts of a man who's been starved and deprived his whole life. The reality is that I've never really wanted for anything. Still, that doesn't stop me from clinging to every lidless plastic container and chipped plate I can get my hands on. Get rid of it. All of it. Put back what you use and set the other stuff off to the side.

With one cabinet down, move onto the next one. Before you know it there will be a pile of stuff in the middle of the floor and you'll have doubled the amount of space you have in your kitchen cabinets. It'll be a Christmas miracle. What it will do too is give you a sense of control and accomplishment and it will keep you from spending a whole lot of money on something that may not need to be replaced right away.

Try it this weekend, even if you only get through one of your cabinets, it will be a start. Set a goal and assign a timeframe to your project. Make it a priority. If you dismiss this sort of thing with a wave of the hand and a very loud announcement that you're too busy, remember that I'm too busy really means That's not important. If you're an I'm too busy repeater, try substituting That's not important when you would ordinarily say I'm too busy for a week. Go ahead. Try it. In no time at all, I think you'll find you have all kinds of time you didn't know you had.

Bad trend alert

I keep seeing this in a couple of the design blogs I read and it's a trend that can't go away fast enough if you ask me. Since I'm going to start writing about cheap fixes, this is an easy one to avoid at all costs. Chalkboard paint isn't cool. Ever. 

A couple of the guys who write for Apartment Therapy have never seen a use of this nonsense that they didn't love. Last week, one of them wrote a glowing review of a chalkboard headboard in somebody's bedroom. Yeah, I can see me living with something like this over my head every night... Give me a break.

Chalkboard paint is juvenile and cheesy looking. Two things to avoid at all costs if you're going to tackle something on your own. Ugh. It strikes me as some kind of a forced march back to childhood. As lovely and idyllic as my childhood was, it was my childhood for crying out loud --something adults are supposed to leave behind. Or are we not doing that anymore? 

Next!

Times ain't THAT hard

I swear, counted among the subscribers to my RSS feed have to be Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. Thanks girls! Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos were the Three Fates Greek mythology. They controlled the thread of a person's life and even the mighty Jupiter cowered in front of them so powerful were they.

I think they read this blog because after my whine yesterday about how put-upon I was to have to assemble a cheap bid for a builder, things took a turn for the better in the form of another builder who met with me yesterday at 11.

Mr. Wise and Brave Builder is building a three million dollar spec house and came to me with a six figure budget for a kitchen and four bathrooms. This same builder handed me a set of prints and told me that he didn't like how his architect had arranged the interior spaces and he wanted me to take a look at everything and make whatever changes I thought would be a good idea. Now that's how it's supposed to work. Hah!

So I suppose my boo-hoo-hoo-ing was heard by somebody. Or not. Maybe it's just that I have a good reputation and a proven track record. Hmmm. OK, new rule. No more doom and gloom Sunday morning pundit shows on MSNBC. Now I just need a visit from Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia --the Three Graces. Hah!

So despite my pleasant uptick in both my outlook and my workload yesterday and in keeping with the times, I'm going to spend the next couple of days talking about cheap and quick fixes. Reasonable, simple ways to give your home interiors a tune up. So stay tuned. 

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to talk about the dos and don'ts of painting existing cabinetry for the next couple of days. I've been researching the topic and I heard from a reader in Minnesota who told me a cautionary tale about his cabinet painting project gone wrong.

Times is hard

I signed a contract with a builder last week. Ordinarily, that would be no big deal. But this contract with a builder was the first contract I'd signed with anybody in weeks. I do my best to resist the punditry's cries of wail and woe concerning the state of the US economy, but enough of it gets into my head that I start to get nervous when my phone doesn't ring for a couple of days.

Anyhow, in order to get this job with this builder, I had to do a couple of things I wouldn't normally agree to do. But as everybody knows, times is hard and the time to relax standards is upon us. Well, it's upon me at any rate.

The first thing I agreed to do that I wouldn't do normally was to prepare a bid. Now, under ordinary circumstances I decline to participate in bids. I don't sell tile, cabinetry, counters, etc. What I'm actually selling is me --my perspective and my expertise. I'm the only one who has those things, so a "bid" is meaningless. I normally work within a budget, but a bid? I don't think so. That was until I remembered the stories I'd read that morning about a collapsing Florida housing market.

So anyhow, my new pal the builder had a parts list, a layout and a bid from another supplier. "Can you beat this?" he wanted to know. My blood pressure started ticking up and I had to talk myself out of explaining to him that I wasn't in the business of helping people to shop. Since I'm more worried about business slowing down than I am in holding onto my pride, I looked over what he'd prepared.

The layout was appalling, just bad --real suburban tract house crap. I told him that there were some technical problems with his layout and he said that I'd be able to change things around if I got the job. Then he left me his set of prints and I told him I'd get back to him the following day. The only technical problem was my bruised ego by the way.

I spent the next four hours putting together what I would do with the space if these were normal times and I were free to do my thing the way I've become accustomed to. With that out of my system, I spent a half an hour recreating the crap he left me and preparing his bid. I used half my normal mark up and spent the rest of the day being with the idea of not making as much money as I'm used to. This was a double whammy I haven't had to deal with in years. This guy was not only telling me what to do, he was controlling how much money I stood to make at the same time. Ugh.

So I wrote up a bid and faxed it to him the next day as promised. He called me almost immediately and told me that I had the job. I'm grateful to have one last thing on the books for 2008. Really I am. But I can't help but wonder if this is what 2009 is going to look like.