Adding handles

drawer front for scale

I love these handles from ELF.  I just bought four small, four medium and four large for the princely sum of £1.80; as you can deduce they cost pennies.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to use for the desk unit.

I chose the small ones, liked them so much I decided to add the medium ones to the TV unit which is what you see below.

3 plus one pieces of kit to fit a handle

To set in most drawer handles and knobs you need -

Ruler - seems to be the invisible variety - steel is best for everything.

Bodger - I also add in to the mix a broken stylus - the thing crafters use to shape paper; it has a ball on it. The ball broke off and left me with a really useful pointy bodger.  (bradawl?).  use large needle, small drill anything to make a starting hole for your drill so you start in just the right place.

Pencil - cheap propelling pencil is the way to go for all measuring as it has a really fine point.

Drill - any drill - I do like this little hand one for small jobs.  I have shoved the drill bit all the way in to where I want to drill up to.  Are you supposed to do that?  No idea - works for me.

Template - The plus one piece of kit is the paper template lying on top of the bottom drawer.  I make a template of the drawer front, fold it in half, mark where the handle needs to be, relative to the sides.  I then place the paper carefully on the drawer making sure the bottom edges are smack on, then mark on the wood where I need to drill.  Remove the paper and (in this case) make two holes.

make them match

Elizabeth clearly worked out a certain length to the bars that go in relative to the thickness of the wood.  Basically if you drill right through, put the drawer flat on a table and push in the handles right through to the table they look just right.  If you want something different and want to be sure they all stick out the same amount you need to find something of the right thickness and put underneath as you press the handles in place.  I was happy with Elizabeth's 1/8th gap for the little folk to get their fingers in.