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One last decision - pull/knob height on tall pantry cab doors??

15 years ago

Mercy! I am down to one last decision.....and my brain has decided that it doesn't want to function anymore! It needs a rest. So maybe some kind souls here will decide for me what to do about the HW on the pantry cabs.

I have a wall with stacked pantry cabinets and a paneled fridge. The cabs are creamy white, inset doors. There are two 36" wide pantry cabs and another 18" one. The doors on the lower portions are approx. 60" high. The uppers are stacked and go to the ceiling.

My original plan was to use glass knobs on the doors and polished nickel pulls on all the drawers. So the three pantries (all doors) would have glass knobs at the bottom of the uppers and top of the lowers. I've seen this look with the knobs all sort of clustered together and I do like it. Fridge has appliance pulls. BUT...... using my handy dandy blue painters tape for two weeks has me rethinking this.

The knobs on the lowers are about eye level for me..... In case you don't want to do the math - I'm short. DH is not short. I wonder if it would be better to use pulls on the lower doors, placed at sort of arm height. Would that be ergonomically easier? Also I am wondering about the long term wear on the hinges? They are exposed, with three on each of the lower doors. With knobs at the top, the knob is higher than all the hinges. Will that top hinge get more torque because I'm pulling from the top. I'm not so worried about them breaking, more that I don't want to have to adjust them all the time because of the HW.

So...... knobs or pulls and where do I put them?

I hope I am sense to those of you nice enough to read this far! If any one has suggestions or pictures I would be more grateful that you can possibly image.

Regards,

Alida (officially worn out by her kitchen reno)

p.s. Thank God for the preview button. Pre-edit my post was all about panty and stacked panties! LOL

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Comments (4)

morton5
15 years ago
Will there ever be kids in the house? A knob at almost 60" high seems too high to me, especially if little ones need to reach it. Also, I would worry about warping the door over time if the knob is in the corner of that tall of a door. The pulls on my pantry doors are 4 ft. off the ground, and they seem very comfortable for everyone in the family.
morton5
15 years ago
And I would use a pull rather than a knob, because I would want it to be sturdy. I have a general preference for pulls over knobs, though.

To revisit the height issue, your refrigerator pull is probably about 4 ft. off the ground, right? And that's pretty comfortable, right?
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biochem101
15 years ago
I have a pantry run in a hall just off the kitchen of stacked cabinets also. There are 4 doors top and bottom in 2 'pairs'. The lower are 56" and the uppers 22". I had also seen the 4 knobs clustered look but did not like it.

Looking through photos I found one on a cabinet site where the lower doors had handles in the middle.

http://www.canaancabinetry.com/gallery_7.php

Since I was using handles on my drawers I tried it out by cutting out black construction paper knobs and handles, puttng tape rolls on the backs, then moving these "paper pulls" around my kitchen.

Tried the all-knob look but liked the bigger handles on the long doors better (my pulls are 6.5"). So the pantry has knobs on top and pulls on the lower doors. Oh, my long doors also have a raised piece of wood panel across the middle like they are divided in two, so it lines up with the middle of that.

Try playing with the paper dolls... I mean PULLS. It helps! :) Good luck!
alida_gw
Original Author
15 years ago
Thanks for the suggestions. I had to laugh about the small children issue. Mine are teenagers, I hadn't even occured to me that a small child wouldn't be able to reach the knobs! I think I will go with pulls mounted lower.... I might try the paper pulls idea (except I'm not sure I'd let me play with scissors right now! LOL)

Thanks
Alida

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