Central Oregon Home Remodeling | Cabinet Hardware

Classing Up Cabinets

THEY GET MANHANDLED EVERY DAY—grabbed, yanked and often leaned on thoughtlessly—as you stand in front of a half-open cabinet door, hand upon hardware, debating an age-old quandary: Oreos or Fig Newtons? They’re the hardworking grunts of your home; they are your cabinet knobs and pulls.

Despite their workaholic nature, cabinet hardware—be they in the kitchen, bath or another space—is far more than a utilitarian matter. Knobs and pulls provide decorative punctuation to an otherwise blank page of cabinetry. They can become the very details that help finish a room’s design.

Choices in hardware styles, of course, are as distinctive as the people who use them. Knobs and pulls are made of everything from glass and wood to antler and ceramics to even stone. “They [the stone knobs] are like pebbles,” says LeAnne Roberts, owner of a Bend design firm and president of the Oregon Chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers.

There are some basic points to consider, however, before outfitting your cabinetry. “One of the first things that I like to do before I start working on the job,” says Beth Primm, a cabinet designer at Moon Woodworking in Bend, “is to look at what the style of the house is ... so that it all fits together and works as one.” This, she says, keeps something like a French-style knob from confusing the aesthetics of a rustic cabin.

Roberts advises her clients—many of whom, she estimates, spend at least $500 on kitchen-cabinet  hardware—to match the finish of the hardware to that of their faucets. She urges them to grab knobs and pulls before buying them, to ensure that the distance from the cabinet is just right. “I tend to like to keep the hardware simpler, so that it doesn’t overwhelm the cabinet,” she says.

Trends in Metal Designs

The Craftsman- and lodge-style homes in Central Oregon, many of which are built with distressed and rustic woodwork, invite casual designs. “Anything that’s in rubbed bronze is very popular,” says Primm. “We do a lot of weathered-metal looks.”

Indeed, metal designs are widely available. Many folks start their search for cabinet hardware by flipping through magazines or by trolling the bins at home-improvement stores for inspiration. The superior materials used in high-quality hardware assure a longer lasting finish. Custom metal work makes an even more precise statement; Ponderosa Forge of Sisters crafts hardware to clients’ specifications, and Sisters bronze artist Peter W. Small creates motifs such as pine cones and trout to help bring the outdoors inside.

Certainly trends in cabinet hardware are always surfacing. In the ’80s, it was brass; in the ’90s, it was polished nickel and brass. “Brushed nickel is the hot thing at the moment,” says Erik Johan Wadenstierna, a local custom woodworker and cabinet designer.

Primm confirms the growing influence of modern designs, too: “It seems like we’re seeing more of that,” she says, “but people are very much into the casual and rustic. They try to work with what fits into Bend’s environment.”

Another pragmatic consideration for a homeowner in selecting hardware is to find  something that’s reliable over the long haul. “They say a drawer gets pulled four to five miles in its lifetime,” says Wadenstierna. Put another way, that’s a lot of trips to the Fig Newton stash.