Hardware!

You won't believe how rare simple, modern, not-crazy-expensive, gold cabinet hardware is to find. I went Level 9 Obsessive on searching of the perfect hardware for our new kitchen, knowing it would be one of my "splurge" areas. It's the bling of the kitchen and something that gets touched multiple times a day so it's not something you want to go cheap on in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, the Ikea hardware is stupid cheap, but looks really well made and solid and I would have been happy to go with their stuff if they made it in the finish I wanted. I'm talking more about all the internet DIYs on spray painting the Ikea hardware gold. They look good, but for how long? I'd be so bummed if the paint started to wear or chip off.

So I knew I wanted a brushed brass/gold finish, and definitely not the super shiny yellow brass, but unfortunately a lot of the sites don't break down their brass hardware into these two color categories so I did a lot of scrolling past terrible hardware to get to the 3% of choice pieces that met my design wishes. My budgetary wishes? Not so much. I budgeted about $500 to get all of the hardware for the kitchen, and got pretty close. I was right at $500 but the clouds parted and the Gods of Internet Coupon Codes blessed me, and I scored a very rare 20% off anything coupon code from one of the several websites that carried the hardware. Paired with free shipping over $29.99, ATGStores.com got my business. I hesitate to link them here, because they were TERRIBLE with the customer service aspect. I purchased the hardware once I thought the kitchen was finalized, but if you remember from the last post, a few cabinet changes were made in the final IKEA plan, so I wanted to swap out a couple of the pulls. Long story short, they were terrible, I didn't swap out anything, but it's going to work out and I just ended up with one extra pull that will get used in the bathroom. No biggie, but boo hiss to ATG's customer support team.

So roughly $400 got me 17 of the 10.5" pulls on the bottom of the picture, 7 of the 5" pulls in the middle, and 9 of the shorty knobs on top. I am SO happy with them too. They are heavy and feel solid and great, and the finish is so pretty. I think they look awesome against the black cabinets, and will go with the cork floors better than silver hardware would have. No regrets!