Install Cabinet Hardware, step by step

The duplex kitchens are looking more and more like real kitchens, and they took an especially big leap forward this past weekend after we got all of the cabinet hardware installed. But drilling holes into new cabinets can be scary and there is not a whole lot of room for error or do-overs. So unless you are a fan of buying a whole new door or drawer front, it is essential that you get everything centered and level on the first try. No pressure, right?

Thankfully, after installing three kitchens-worth of pulls and knobs in the last year and a half, we have perfected our system. So here is how you can keep things straight, centered, consistent throughout the whole kitchen, and bring down the fear-factor when drilling into your brand new (or freshly refinished/repainted) cabinets.

We even included a short video that’ll take you through each step (and show you a sneak peek at the wood kitchen side of the duplex), so let us get began.

Installation Tools & Supplies

Here are the tools and supplies you will want to have on hand to assist your installation go smoothly:

• Your pulls or knobs (we did these in nickel on the side with the blue Kallarp doors, and the same ones in brass on the wood Askerlund doors). * Buying hardware in bulk like this can keep costs way down
• This two-pack of hardware templates
• Tape measure
• Screwdriver (with Philips head or whatever head matches the screws that came with your cabinet hardware)
• Power drill
• 3/16″ drill bit (one’s included with our fav hardware templates)
• 5/64″ drill bit (or smaller – ours is from this drill bit set)
• Pen or pencil
• Painter’s tape
• Clamp

Video: Installing Your Cabinet Pulls

We made a start-to-finish video while installing one set of drawers so you can see the process in real time. We have also shown each step in photos below if you’d prefer to see the steps that way, but the video will give you a truly complete view of what is involved (and show you a sneak peek of the wood kitchen side of the duplex). Plus you can play Where’s Waldo and try to spot Sherry’s slippers somewhere in this video.

NOTE: If you are viewing this in a feed reader you may need to click through to the original journal post see the video. You can also watch it here on YouTube.

Step 1: Mark Your Hardware Templates

The hardware templates are the real heroes of this project, so if you are hesitating to spend the $10 on them – THEY ARE FULLY WORTH IT. They’ll save you so much time and stress. They have holes for all of the standard handle spreads (ours were 4″) and plenty of options for how far down from the cabinet top you may want them placed (we did a 2″ drop). If you are doing knobs, you will simply use the holes down the center at whatever drop you choose, which is also pleasant and handy to keep things consistent.

Once we have determined which holes will give us our desired handle placement, we use tape and a pen to mark them right on the template with a circle and a big arrow. There are a lot of holes in close proximity on these templates, and you do not want to accidentally drill through the wrong one at any point, so whatever you have to do to idiot-proof the process is worth the few seconds it takes. This is what ours looks like after we have marked our chosen holes at the right spread (again, your pulls determine this – ours were 4″ pulls) and drop (remember we chose a 2″ drop for all of ours throughout the kitchen).

Step 2: Tape Off Your Cabinet Fronts

Before drilling, place painter’s tape roughly where you are going to hang your hardware. This not only gives you a surface you can mark up without in fact marking on your cabinets, it will also assist prevent your cabinet finish from cracking or splitting as your drill into it. For efficiency, we like to tape off all of the drawers in one cabinet at the same time and work our way around the kitchen that way – simply taking it one area at a time.

Step 3: Mark A Center Line On Each Front

This step is essential, especially on stacks of drawers like this because you will truly notice if one handle is even slightly off-center or not level with the others. So we like to take our time and truly triple check ourselves.

First, measure the full width of your door. Even though ours is a 24″ base cabinet, the drawer fronts themselves are slightly smaller (23 7/8″).

Then do whatever math you need to do to figure out half of your drawer front measurement (ours is 11 15/16″ – or simply one compact tick mark inside the 12″ line). Once you are certain of your center measurement, mark it on your blue tape – then double-check yourself by measuring again from the OTHER side of the drawer to make sure it is the same on both sides.

I know that last step may seem like overkill, but we caught our own mistakes a couple of times during this installation (once you are on your 20th drawer, 12 15/16″ starts to look a lot like 11 15/16″). So double-checking from the other side saved us more than once from some badly placed holes.

Once you’ve marked the center on each drawer (you may even want to do a swift visual confirmation that they seem to line up with one another) draw your marks a little bigger so they’ll be easier to see in the next step, and step back to make sure they all look lined up.

Step 4: Line Up Your Hardware Template

On your first drawer, rest the hardware template’s lip on the top of your drawer and then center it over the lines you simply marked. This was a little easier with our old template (which was clear) but with sufficient squinting through those center holes on the template, we could see our premarked line on the blue tape behind it.

Once you are sure you’ve got the template centered on your marked line AND evenly resting on the top of the drawer, we like to clamp ours in place so it does not move during the next step.

Step 5: Drill Pilot Holes Through Your Hardware Template

Some people prefer to simply mark their handle holes through their template with a pen (remember these are the holes in the template that you taped off with the arrow pointing at them), but we find that we are able to get a much more precise hole if we drill directly through the hole in the template. You will need a fairly small drill bit to do this (ours was 5/64″) but you’d want to drill a small pilot hole to start each hole anyway (before moving onto the larger bit) so it is pleasant to simply do it through the template.

Assuming your cabinet hardware is like ours that screws on through the back of the drawer, you will want to make sure your pilot hole goes all the way through the drawer and pokes out the back. I show in the video how we tend to drill slowly as we go through the back to minimize any potential cracking on the backside of the drawer. You can also put more painter’s tape on the back of the drawer where your drill bit will poke through if you are especially concerned about splintering on the back, but in most cases it will be covered by the screw head anyway.

Once the first drawer is done, we like to repeat Steps 4 and 5 (center your template, drill pilot holes) on the rest of the drawers in whatever cabinet we are working on so that we do not have to switch our our drill bit back and forth for each drawer. Bulking stuff this way makes you faster and gets you into a pleasant rhythm.

Step 6: Drill Your Final Holes

Once you’ve made all of your pilot holes, remove your hardware template (but not your tape!) and switch out your drill bit for a 3/16″ bit. The hardware template in fact comes with one because it is the standard size for most hardware screws. But it does not hurt to make sure it creates a large sufficient hole for your screws. Then, carefully drill through your pilot holes with the larger bit – again being sure to go through the back of the door, but without too much force.

Once all of the larger holes are drilled, you can at last remove your tape.

Step 7: Attach Your Cabinet Hardware

Now you can screw your hardware onto each door or drawer front. Your screws will go through from the inside of the drawer, and I like to connect both ends before tightening each screw with my hands first.

Once all of my pulls are loosely attached, I go back with a regular screwdriver and tighten everything so it is held firmly to the door. I suggest NOT using your power drill here because screwing too tightly could cause damage to the door or drawer.

Step 8: Clean Up & You are Done!

The last thing you will want to do is break out your vacuum hose to suck up all of the drill shavings in the drawers, cabinets, and on the floor. But other than that, you are all done. Well, or you move on and repeat these steps for the rest of your cabinets.

And I should note that the process works fairly much the same if you are installing knobs or pulls on a door like the cabinet fronts under the sink. You simply use the OTHER template included in the set. It is designed to rest along the corner of your cabinet door like the one you see below:

So I hope that helps take some of the fear and guesswork out of installing your own cabinet hardware. We will never not wince a little when making holes in cabinet doors, but following these steps helped us knock out both duplex kitchens in less than two hours – without a single crooked or off-center handle!

And for everyone who wants to see the whole kitchen and hear a bunch of pointers for installing Ikea cabinets, stay tuned for a post coming up where we talk more about the process as a whole. Since we have gotten plenty of practice installing Ikea kitchens, we have some tricks we wanna pass along. In the meantime, here is a previous post on installing Ikea cabinets that will give you some info.

Want more kitchen how-tos? Check out these posts below:

• How To Paint Kitchen Cabinets
• Make Your Own Cabinet Hardware Template
• Installing Under Cabinet Lighting
• How to Hang A Subway Tile Backsplash for $200

*This post contains affiliate links*