How to install Cabinet hardware in your Home

We just moved into a new house. A BRAND new home! We’ve built our first house as a family (hopefully our last…) and couldn’t be more excited to get in and make it a forever home. 

As a part of making it our forever home, we opted out of a lot of the upgrades that the builder had offered, deciding to do it ourselves instead of paying for a professional to do it. 

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Why, do you ask, would we want to DIY things in our brand new home? 

First, to save a little money! When we were at the design center choosing our flooring materials, paint colors and upgrades, they offered things like cabinetry hardware as an “upgrade” and they were WAY overpriced and super limited on their options. 

So secondly, we wanted to be more custom. We weren’t building with a custom builder, so the best we could do to make our home unique was to tell them to just leave things blank and we would go in and do the work ourselves. 

That’s basically the jist of it. And I’m also a big project person myself, being a designer in my heart and soul, and nesting like crazy during this pregnancy, so I wanted to learn how to do things like brick a fireplace, tile a bathroom, put hardware on cabinets, etc. 

So, here you have our little tutorial on putting your own custom hardware on your cabinets at home. If you have any questions about something I don’t cover or something I missed please comment below to make this tutorial even better!

Let’s start out with what you will need. 

First and foremost choose what hardware you want for your cabinets. 

We wanted a classy handle that was timeless, the right price and the right color. We ended up finding on Amazon these gorgeous, exclusive, Golden Nickel handles by Hickory Hardware that we thought looked amazing with the counters and cabinet stain we had selected. These were a little pricey, so if you’re looking for a steal of a deal check out this link for good hardware at a good price. 

My little piece of advice when selecting hardware, don’t choose a handle just cause it’s trendy. Pick handles that you love and will love seeing in your own space! Also, be sure to look at the details of hardware that you may be considering. Our handles came with two sets of two screw lengths, a longer one for drawers and shorter for doors. It was super nice to not have to go to the hardware store to get longer or shorter screws if we needed them it came with it! Our template also had an added drill bit included that we didn’t use cause it was a bigger size, but it was nice to have it just in case!

Secondly, get the right template. 

I HIGHLY recommend getting a stencil/template online. We have friends who did it without and they spent hours upon hours just measuring the centers of each cabinet and the sides of each door separately to make it JUST RIGHT. And we took about 2-3 minutes per door with a template. It was amazing, and worth the $13. Yes, it’s only $13. Order our template pictured above on Amazon Here. Or click the image below.

I’m going to add an additional plug here for this particular template, cause there are a few that are cheaper on Amazon but I wouldn’t trade this one for a cheaper one. It was the PERFECT fit for all but one or two of our cabinets. Making it SO easy to find the center point every time.

Also, when picking a template, you want to be sure it has the correct hole spacing for the hardware you’ve picked out. The majority of our hardware was 160mm wide, with three extra wide handles for the big drawers (224mm). So we needed a template with both of these sizes, and the one we got was perfect. Also, I loved that it was clear so you could see what it looked like when holding up the hardware to it. 

Lastly, grab the rest of the tools.

You’ll need a drill, the correct drill bit for your screw size, a phillips drill bit, and an awl. 

Once you have everything gathered all you do is align, awl, drill then screw in your hardware!

(Side note: it doesn’t show in this image but we used a hammer with the awl to make deep enough markings so the drill bit set in the measured hole perfectly)

The door hardware was super simple, the drawers were a little bit more tricky. 

So for the drawers you need to measure the entire width and divide that in half, and then the entire height and divide that in half to find the center point for your template. Luckily, for us and our cabinet style and the template we got, it fit within the grooves of the drawer and we could use the row of holes that were the closest to the center height wise, then we used a measuring tape to get the numbers for the center of the drawer width wise. 

Again, this template was quite the time saver. If you have the same style of cabinets as we do (shaker style) this template works wonders. 

It took us a total of about 4 hours to complete this project, start to finish, with two people working together and our total cost was about $300 for materials and hardware. Expert installation can range up to about $500, and our home builders were charging $600 for the upgrade done by them. We picked a more pricey hardware for our kitchen, but there are plenty of options on Amazon for less!

All in all, this was such an easy one day project for us, and something to spice up your living space with design details, plus you get to learn how to do something new and fun! Share and save for yourself or others later! >> Thanks!