Installing hardware with two holes: Drilling & Prayin

Stuff just kind of shows up at our house. Via a sturdy combo of Amazon Prime and something called Mic It...correction MICIT Raleigh, I normally have a steady wave of stuff to install or assemble.

Several boxes showed up a week ago containing hardware for our kitchen cabinets. Hardware is one of the smaller kitchen fixes you can do, while also going a long way in refreshing a room's look and feel.

Kitchen pre hardware

Large cabinet doors are easy to do. Measure out one consistent spot on each door (say an inch in and an inch down), drill one hole, screw hardware on, and enjoy! But if your lead kitchen designer is like my lead kitchen designer, momma likes handles for her drawers, and handles have two holes to drill for.

And therein, as the bard would tell us, lies the rub.

Tools for this job: drill, drill bits, pencil (we didn't have one, so pen), and just a general screwdriver

I installed my first set of this type of hardware at our old house, which you can read about at my better half's blog here. The second go round was a lot easier, and here are my tips:

1) Mark the middle point of your drawers, and center the handle around this spot. Stencil/trace around the handle directly on the cabinet. You don't have to do the whole handle, but definitely get VERY detailed with where the two posts will go.

Getting the location of the two posts right is critical. It can result in not connecting the handle correctly (it being super loose), or you needing to get a totally new cabinet drawer....we want to avoid this.

Outline where the posts go!

2) Drill a hole at the center of the outline for each post. My hardware used 8-32 screws (of two lengths: 3/4 and 1-1/4), so a 1/8 drill bit can work here, but it'll be a bit snug. I Googled it and the "proper size" would be a #29 drill bit or a 9/64 (and if you're doing the math, is a bit larger than 1/8). But my beginners drill bit set doesn't get that nuanced.

Going one size up will not kill you. If you measured properly, and drilled the holes in the right spot, the screws will keep the handle nice and snug once they connect, regardless if the hole is a bit larger than it "should" be.

Also, I drilled from the outside in, so no huge need to cover the drill holes with masking tape (to prevent wood and paint splintering). Going this extra step is fine and probably does help preserve some appearance.

3) If you're doing this the first time, it's not a bad idea to stop when one hole is drilled, screw it in, and remeasure where the outline for the second post goes. If it's off a bit, restencil that sucker!!! If you go off and drill the second hole and it's not fully aligned, you're going to have this extra hole in your drawer / the hardware will kind of just be hanging there sad it doesn't have a second screw holding it in.

This would be bad.

4) Drill out your second hole, say a little prayer or do a little dance, and screw in the other post.

5) Congratulate yourself!

Yay! Hardware installed!

I really lucked out this go round (as compared to my first try linked above) in that the posts for my hardware were actual posts, two little prongs that jutted out from the rest of the handle. This meant I could get super accurate with where the two holes should go.

The first time I did this, we just bought the ones we liked the most from Lowe's and the two holes for the two screws were flush with the handle. This sucked. Bad.

Try and avoid this if you can. Doing so will result in you being much more confident about the whole process, it going much quicker, and you feeling much like DJ Khaled...