Where to Place Cabinet Hardware

It’s a big week for our kitchen renovation. The herringbone floor tile was finished, our appliances arrived, countertops are about to be delivered, and our tiny closet of a powder room was wallpapered. Soon our plumbing and light fixtures will be installed. Everything’s coming together.

But there’s one thing that’s keeping me up at night (meaning I’ve conducted furious midnight image searches on Houzz to ease my mind): Where to place the cabinet hardware.

This might seem strange to other people. I assume that choosing a style is the hardest part for most folks. But I quickly zeroed in on a combination of knobs and bar pulls in a dreamy rose-gold satin finish. After falling for all of the copper and rose gold I had seen at recent home-decor markets, I wanted to incorporate the warm-metal trend in a way that felt fresh, yet stayed true to the traditional styling of the home. 

I think these babies feel spot-on for the space:

Hickory Hardware Cottage Knob in Satin Rose Gold

Hickory Hardware Cottage Bar Pull in Satin Rose Gold

Once you’ve picked your pieces, all you have to do is attach them, right?

Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaa.

While it’s true that there’s no RIGHT way to install hardware, there are GOOD ways to install hardware and a lot of NOT AS GOOD ways. Hence the midnight Googling: When you've just spent an arm and three legs on great cabinetry, the last thing you want to do is to muck it all up with a poorly placed knob.

Take, for instance, the time my husband put cup pulls on our kitchen drawers, and spaced them like this:

Source: Domino

“What?” he shrugged when he heard me groan. “Each bin pull is equidistant from the top of each drawer.”

“They look like file cabinets!” I shouted. “I’m putting Tupperware in there, not my tax returns!”

That was in our old condo. I’ll be calling the hardware shots this time around.

I started with the knobs. Our cabinet installer, Pat, told me that most people just center the knob between the rail and the stile of the cabinet door. Like this:

But the more pictures I looked at, the funnier that looked to me. The knob just looks like a postage stamp on the corner of the cabinet door--a functional afterthought, not a part of the design. 

Installed much farther down, on the other hand, the wee knobs remind me of tiny doorknobs. Personally, I'd get tired of bending this far down to open the lower cabinets:

Source: Britten Interiors

After a day of dithering, I settled on a knob placement like this, centered on the top line of the inset panel:

So much better, right? This shot from Traditional Home sealed the deal. The knobs on the sink cabinet just look natural. 

Source: Traditional Home

On the cabinets with drawers, I’ve chosen to use a single 3 ¾ inch pull rather than mixing up a bunch of different sizes. I like the consistency of a uniform size, and it feels pleasantly old-fashioned to me. It reminds me of how people used to buy house parts out of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, when they didn't have a million custom options from which to choose. (Did you know people did that? You could order anything, from newel posts and stair rails to windows and lights. A lot of the “unique” and “historic” details people swoon over in late-1800s houses were purchased via mail-order.)  

The pulls will be centered on the drawer faces. A few of our cabinets have a combination of wide and narrow drawers, so I’m doing two pulls on the wide drawers, stacked directly below the pulls above, like this:

Our kitchen island cabinets. 

It looks like a dresser, right? Which leads me to a rule of thumb for cabinet hardware on drawers, whether you're choosing knobs, cups, or bar pulls: Put the hardware where it'd be if it were on a piece of furniture. It will always look more natural and feel more intuitive. You won't need to train your brain to open and close the drawers--your hands will know where to go.

Here's a sneak peek at what we're calling the "appliance wall," since we will be hiding our coffee machines and microwave in those garage-style cabinets. (They're protruding because they can't be installed until the interior countertops go in.) 

You won't believe what we're packing into this single wall: a pantry, beverage fridge, broom closet, and more. Lots of cabinets. Lots of knobs and pulls. I can't wait. 

Love Interests, Vol. 1

Sometimes it happens while I'm looking for a specific product at work. Other times it's when I'm searching furiously for something I need for my own house. But I am always, always falling hard for products for which I have absolutely no use.  It's like coming across the perfect catch of a bachelor when you're just not in the market for a mate. 

So I'm just going to start playing matchmaker, and putting these beauties on display so other, more eligible people can fall in love. Today's lineup? Chairs and stools. Let's have a look.

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Bachelor #1: The Handsome Buck

I mean, those legs. They make me knock-kneed—just like him.
Clara Bar Stool by Noir.

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Bachelor #2: The Modern Artist

An old soul with an updated edge, this guy is a twist on a classic Michael Thonet-designed bentwood chair. That ombre finish melts me. There's also a version with the ombre in reverse.
No. 89 Le Corbusier chair, Thonet Australia. 

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Bachelor #3: The Knight in Shining Armor

This fella has seriously regal style, but it's softened by the limed wood finish. The detail-on-detail is a little showy, but he's fun to look at, so why not? 
Shuksan stool, Wayfair.

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Who's ready for a date?

Obsessed With... Marble Mantels + Louis Philippe Mirrors

One of the features that drew me to our home was the original marble mantels. You see these in townhouses all over older US cities like Boston and NYC, especially ones built in the mid-19th century. 

A lovely specimen at one of my favorite local spots for salvaged house parts, Restoration Resources.

I KNOW. Here's what ours looks like in our parlor. A little less ornate, but still delicious. 

Don't mind the little cutie pie in front. Rug, vintage from Brimfield; velvet tub chair, Joss & Main; bronze leather Moroccan pouf, Wayfair; accent pillow, Joss & Main; lamp, Wayfair; bowls,Wayfair .  

Fun fact: Many of the mantels you see in homes in my area never housed fireplaces. They accommodated an early type of central heating, in which warm air would enter the room via the pretty, heavily ornamented iron grates. 

These mantels look particularly amazing when topped with a grand mirror—specifically a Louis Philippe.

Case in point:

Source: Domino

Here's another stunning marble mantel + Louis Philippe combo, from a feature in Boston Home. 

Source: Boston Home; photo by Eric Roth

How amazing is that mirror's silhouette? Long lines, a few curves, and a French soul. The flat base makes this style ideal for placing over an entry table or mantel. I'm smitten. And since Louis Philippe-style mirrors were made popular during the 1830s and 1840s, and our Second Empire (read: French)-style townhouse was built in 1860, I think it's a perfect fit. 

For years I've been passively hunting for one of these amazing mirrors, hoping to stumble on my Louis at the Brimfield antiques show or to buy one for $100 from some unsuspecting renovator on Craigslist. No dice. Luckily, options abound: antique and new, gilded and distressed. Let's shop. 

1. Antique gilt mirror, $3,995, Jayson Home. 2. Eloquence Louis Phillipe mirror in worn black, $2,645, Layla Grace. 3. Cooper Classics Sepik mirror, $298, Wayfair. 4. Louis Philippe 116" Gilt Mirror, $1,595, Restoration Hardware. 5. Silver Louis Philippe mirror, $2,500, Postcard from Paris. 6. French wall mirror, $2,175, Chairish.  

What do you think? Are most of these prices absolutely bonkers? Or is this the piece that'll make the room? 

My Secret Addiction: Herringbone Tile

Well, it’s a secret until you step foot in my house: Like hoarding, or a deep love of curry, this addiction is kind of hard to hide from your houseguests. Unlike those weirdos on TLC, however, I don’t want to do anything disturbing to my herringbone tile—I just want to stare at it. And maybe kiss it from time to time, after the cleaners come.

It started in the master bathroom, circa 2013. My husband and I—well, our contractor, Arthur, and his team—were gutting our only bathroom and an adjacent closet to create one larger master bath. I knew I wanted a glass-enclosed shower, which would allow you see clear through to the far wall when entering the room. That meant we’d need a floor tile that would work both inside and outside the shower, because I didn't want to visually split the room by switching flooring materials halfway through. And I wanted a pattern that would help guide the eye forward and make the room feel as deep as possible. Sure, we were gaining several feet by taking over a closet, but we still live in the city. Every (perceived) inch counts. 

Enter herringbone. I fell in love with these babies at a local showroom, Tile Showcase, and that was that.

Source: Tile Showcase

Each tile on the sheet is 1-inch by 2-inch polished white Carrara marble. Though polished tile is generally a no-no in showers due to the slipping hazard they create, mosaic tiles are the exception. Once they’re installed with grout, the floor has a nice grip to it. 

Seven months pregnant and cozying up to the new bathroom tile sample.

Here's how they look in the master bath today. We went with a soft gray grout, which hides dirt a little better than white, but isn't so dark as to give things an industrial edge.

Pleasant surprise: This pattern offers great camouflage for dirt. There are probably three lost contact lenses and an earring backing in this picture.

But I couldn’t stop there. A year later, we were deep into our next project: outfitting our house’s garden level with a new bedroom, bath, hallway, and mudroom. (To those of you who don’t live like us groundhogs in Boston, a garden level is a half-sunken basement that usually walks out to a small garden in the back of the house.) It wasn’t long before herringbone began calling to me again.

Meeeee. Pick meeee. Image via Pinterest

I loved the look above as a counterpoint to all the heart pine flooring in the house, and I love the idea of a dark tile in areas than can get a little grimy. I selected a similar tile size to the one shown, only instead of slate I opted for basalt, a hard volcanic stone. It has the same charcoal color as slate, but with a more consistent look from tile to tile.

We put it in the garden-level bathroom. We put it in the new mudroom. And now, another year later, it's getting installed in the kitchen, too:

Stay tuned for the full kitchen reveal... in Kodachrome!

I think that's every surface of our home NOT already covered in hardwood. So I'm probably done putting herringbone on my floors.

Probably. 

Oh Kale, No.

"Hello. Do you have any ornamental kale?" 

The very thought of making this phone call to Home Depot on a Sunday morning made me hate myself a little. But it's late September in Boston, I'm a yuppie, and I got this nifty sidewalk planter not long ago. I need the kale. 

In an ideal world, I'd just head to Mahoney's, my local source for pretty and less-expected container plants and holiday greenery. I'd spend the afternoon looking at delicate ferns, hybrid flowers, and heirloom tree varieties and fantasizing about having a rooftop conservatory where I could grow citrus trees in winter. But Mahoney's wasn't in the cards today, because kids. At least if they knock everything off the shelves at the Depot, I can throw them both into an orange cart and we can all go hide in a floor-model shower stall for twenty minutes. 

I couldn't bring myself to call—just loaded everyone into the car and tried our yuppie luck. And after a few passes through the Garden Center, I found one neglected cart of limp ornamental kale in the corner and dug out the only three viable-looking heads. I also found rows and rows of standard-issue mums, so I picked up a few pots to plant alongside the kale.

Trick of the trade: If you're impatient like me and want full containers that spill over with blooms from the day you plant them, buy hanging planters instead of standard pots and clip off the plastic hangers. They're usually the same price, and you can often get multiples on sale. 

One muddy hour of digging and planting with the kids, a few decorative gourds from Whole Foods, and bingo: Yuppie arrangements for days. Because that's probably as long as I'll keep them alive.

Fairfield patio planter, $190, Wayfair.

Any tips on keeping these babies looking good? Do share.