I am smiling.... Yup, that's life. It is all part of a master plan....

How about no pulls? If you are putting a mural on there, and assuming that it is darker/richer colors, you could just have them router out a hole. Paint the exposed wood in a color that will blend. Stick your fingers in and pull. :-)

Right now I am working in an non-profit where the goals is to help disadvantaged youth succeed in post-secondary opportunities and/or work force positions. I work the high-schoolers who are disadvantaged but on the right track. But sometimes I hear other youth that come into the office to meet with their program managers: youth sleeping on the street, young women at home with three kids and no fathers, young men dealing to get ahead. I get to see how lucky I am.

Sorry for the depressing post.

I wrote a post that seemingly disappeared. If it reappears, I apologize in advance for duplicate sentiments.

It's called reframing. Unfortunately, Pal has now been conditioned that $55/@ is not a crazy price for a door pull. Intellectually he still knows it it high, but that visceral hurdle has been overcome.

Selcier is experiencing reframing too, but of a kind that is probably more in concert with what we (all) need to do more of.

I completely understand this. Half my week is spent in clinical situations where patient care is provided either completely free of charge, covered by a needs based grant, or at extremely reduced rates.

On the one hand I have a complete understanding of how lucky I am. On the other I have an understanding of how underemployed I am, when overall I make about 50% of what a typical member of my profession/specialty makes. (And yet all the expenses I have to maintain my professional standing are 100% of they typical member of my profession makes)

I'm not complaining about having the ability to spend $600 for hinges, believe me, it's really an observation about the existence of $600 hinges.

I don't how many times I've encountered something that make me pause or gasp in price, and then when I found out how expensive the alternatives were, brought me back to it again for consideration. But I understand your point about bifurcation -- you stray away from the common and mass produced and you are in another realm entirely.

My GC says I like exotic things. Sigh.

I think this is one problem with being a researcher and a bit obsessive by nature. I know more of what's out there because I google it and come here and so on. And I do notice things, like that the casement windows my GC is recommending do not match my existing casements at all well.

I think many people with very lovely homes and wonderful lives don't do this kind of research and don't focus on the details as much. And I think they are just as happy with their results as I am--maybe happier because they never saw that $150 door hardware or $1,000 faucet in the first place.

Crl,

That is also one of the problems of working with an interior designer or even doing to-the-trade shopping on your own. Of course there are beautiful things out there at silly prices. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

I used Rocky Mountain Hardware knobs and pulls in my master bathroom remodel. You can certainly see/feel the difference between the RMH ones and a $2 competitor. I've only had them for a few months so I can't speak to their durability. Knobs/pull are used/touched constantly, so not the place where you want to substitute lower quality/cost alternatives. Many of the cheap ones that came with the house are disclored and flaking

I think there is a big problem with essentially unlimited access.

When I first started design school, and I wanted specs on things I had to order a catalog.

I ordered two Kohler catalogs, one for kitchen one for bath and they were $20 each, in the 1990s. I ordered a GE appliance catalog and it was probably at least $10. These were not even the designer binders which were probably $100.

The casual shopper was not going to shell out hundreds of dollars in specialized catalogs to be able to compare a Whirlpool dishwasher to a Miele or a Summit refrigerator to a Subzero. People looked at what they could afford, mostly, because that's what they targeted at the appliance store, and now they look at everything. And, for example, the nearest place you could even see a real live Subzero where I grew up was in a showroom three hours away. So what you didn't know didn't hurt you--if you knew what a Subzero was, and wanted one, you probably could afford it, and had to seek it out. And pretty much everything you looked at, then, as a consumer, was filtered through some sort of professional, whether it was someone at an appliance store, a kitchen place, or an interior designer.

I have told this story before but I once had two clients who were friends and one tagged along with the other when we went on a NYC trip to Room and Board. The client who was actually going to buy a few pieces of R&B furniture that day wanted to see a couple of the pieces in person before making a decision.

The client who had essentially no budget kept jumping from one high ticket item to the next saying "You didn't even show me this!" I like this so much better than _____."

I had to keep saying " I didn't show you a $3000 chair, because $3000 is your entire budget," "I didn't show you this lamp because it's too expensive", I didn't show you a new sofa because one of your own clients just gave you one that is perfectly fine"

In the old days an interior designer had a lot of control over what was shown to the client because only they had access to a lot of it . They weren't going to bother showing you things that you couldn't afford in the first place.

That client who got distracted by all the other stuff ended up never doing that part of the project at all, and I think part of it was that he saw all these things he couldn't have and blocked out the rest.

But how do you establish a budget until you have seen the $3,000 chair, the $1,000, and the $10,000 chair, or whatever, for that matter. Maybe optimization for him was to buy one chair he loved and forget the rest, who knows?

These pulls don't sound like rocket science. Any metal shop should be able to pull it off. Hell, I think could make them, with just a beginning jewelry class and the household tools I own. Scotch-Brite makes a nice satin finish.

He really didn't have the discretionary income to establish a budget in this fashion.

I was bartering with this client, and I was basically trying to help him find decent furniture for a tiny house, and he really was not capable of doing this on his own.

I, maybe, could establish a budget this way, because I actually have a budget, to the extent that I have $_____ to renovate this house and I can make choices as to how it gets spent. So if I buy four of the $125-150 door pulls instead of four $10 ones, that's $560 dollars that goes for door pulls and not something else.

He, on the other hand, was trying to determine how much it would cost to have a couple decent chairs in his room instead of a bicycle and a couple trash picked chairs without all the cushions--and then he was going to try to save or come up with the money.

Cawaps, I know, right?

If only it were that simple.

I am constantly in awe of people on blogs or on TV who can get their friendly metal shop to make ___, get their friendly autobody shop to paint a refrigerator, get their friendly stone yard to take this remnant and carve it into a replica of the David for $50.

That's never been my experience, and I ask, politely. This is our local environment:

Metal shop:

How many? Four? Hmph. We don't do jobs for customers off the street. Oh, you are an interior designer? Do you do commercial work? Like maybe if you needed forty . But four? It's not worth it.

Friendly auto shop:

What? Paint a what? I mean what the f---? Why would you do that? No.

@pal, that is why I love Etsy for certain things. It allows me to source things from people who are willing to take on my custom jobs, whereby locally it can be a PITA (sadly, cause I like to source local).

Putting on the blinders used to be really useful. I would avoid the trade showrooms in the past, just to keep things manageable. The internet (and sites like Houzz) has ruined that tactic.

Isn't it interesting, how we complicate our own lives? :-) I agree, it really would be nice, in some ways, to never see or know about all the options out there.

And yes, a bifurcated economy, with "things" that cost absurd amounts of money, while others live in poverty, and those of us in the middle have to navigate between guilt over spending too much, and frustration with not having the means to get exactly what we want. It is complicated! The sociology of design and decorating... it's very deep :-)

The metal shop and friendly auto shop - worth coming back to "the new and improved" GW. I've missed reading your posts, Pal.

I would consider myself a "have" for my region. Well, lower level "have" anyway. And of course I love beautiful things that I can't afford but I can put a logical spin on just about anything.

My sister is getting a divorce. She's a "really have" on the upper east coast. That puts her in an entirely different ball game than me. Anyway, I've become her go-to person and so I've seen all the documentation including budgets. Holly c--p! I had no idea!! The numbers are boggling my mind.

Then, I read about some billionaire couple getting a divorce and the wife's monthly stationery budget is $20k!

Not too long ago, I found a twin size linen sheet set at the RH outlet for $120. I knew they were too expensive (especially for a seldom used day bed in my office) but all I could think of was that if I were getting them from Rough Linen, they would cost upward of $300. What a bargain. I wasn't even looking for sheets, much less for a twin day bed.

Well, this probably sounds suspiciously like trickle down economics, but I at least hope that by spending $600 on hinges instead of $24 that I am helping to employ someone at a slightly higher level of employment (?) I got these hinges today by the way, and the box is large and weighs a ton, each hinge probably weighs more than all eight normal hinges would, and they are a fairly precision device.

As for the ridiculously expensive and the used-to-be-expensive edge pull, it's sort of the same thing. They are handcrafted by someone, specifically for this company in New York, or hand cast in Idaho rather than stamped out by the thousands. Not that this means I can commit to paying such a price.

Well, I think that logic is correct. Only high value-added, artisanal manufacturing can be justified locally, pretty much. Especially in the Northeast corridor.

As it turns out, since I am using a simple slab door, solid core and birch, because they are going to be painted, and possibly wallpapered, that the door will be the cheapest element of the combination, with the hinges being the most expensive.

Sounds like when we 'needed' custom drapes for our triangle type window that was 12 feet hight to replace the purple ruffled sheers and got a quote for $1800. This was close to 10 years ago, we were 27 and almost kicked her out of the house (nicely of course!).

Then we couldn't find anyone to do these custom drapes. The $1800 was worth it to get rid of the purple. But it was like looking through the room with rose coloured glasses, everything had a pink hue :) And we still love the drapes and they are so wonderfully done and timeless. So it was a good purchase. As is yours.

Pal, can you use those magic things behind the door that clasp when you close the door, and to open it you push on the door and it releases? No hardware in sight.

Plating is ridiculously expensive. I had four cabinet pulls replated in satin brass for a piece of furniture in our basement--- small pulls--- and it was about $120. Then a beveled glass french door needed reinforcements, and an art glass repair guy had very thin, quarter inch flat steel rods cut to fit across the door right on the horizontal divisions between the rows of panes. Four of them plated in satin brass was close to $300! It's a very straightforward process, but I guess they know if someone wants a thing replated it means they want THAT thing and no other.

The plating place around the corner from me wasn't all that expensive. On the one hand it's a relatively straightforward process, on the other, It's a picky thing to get a good finish on things. I used to plate things in the metaplast fashion noted in the other thread, but we just needed a raw plated surface.

With regard to the touch latches, I am not a huge fan of those. They often seem to get off kilter so the door will be latched but not fully closed in a flat position. That would drive me crazy. I eventually took these latches off the cabinets my parents had them on and put back the magnet catches.

But even when they work, the paint finish gets burnished from pushing on the same spot all the time --oils from hands and such--and I would want to open them with a paper towel or something all the time. If I wallpaper these doors as planned, I would be even more paranoid.

I actually had a cabinet in my old house that had no hardware and I could open the bottom door by bending over since it was slightly long over the toe kick, or I could open it with my big toe, The upper door's bottom edge was then exposed and I could open the upper door. It meant opening the lower door to open the upper but I didn't want hardware there at all.

The guy who bought the place didn't know their was cabinets there for several weeks, he thought it was paneling.

I recall once we were looking for a quote on a half-moon shaped pergola, maybe 12' diameter. Odd, I know .. long story.

Anyway we were in the kitchen with the contractor and the guys quotes "58" and my DH is like ok, great, when can you start, and I am gesticulating wildly behind the contractor at my DH "no, no no". DH thought it was $5800, I knew the guy said $58,000!

Something about using mahogany or something in order to make it bend in the curvilinear shape. Whew, that was close!

If the thought that you might have to use a paper towel to open a cabinet even has a toehold in your mind, you're right----those touch latches are not for you!! Life is complicated enough. I do sympathize though. Our original kitchen cabinet doors had the routed hand hold thingie with no pulls at the bottom of each door, and the finish was completely worn off the most used doors. Some of them were brown looking from dirty fingers. Ewww.

The nearest plating place around here is in Buckhead in Atlanta and they do a perfect job. They can plate anything in almost any metal, but it costs because of the location. We recently shared the specs on our electric gate system with a couple in Buckhead so they could compare to their contractor's bid....it's been almost four years, but their cost was 300% above ours for the same thing. Cha Ching!

Another aspect to all of this is that each individual element starts to raise the bar for each other individual element, because everything is seen in the context of each other.

This room also has a pocket door into the bathroom and I've done a fairly exhaustive search of pocket door hardware. If the door opening could be wide enough, I would've had the door project from the pocket even when open, and put regular hardware on it.

Like everything else there seems to be two essential options or categories.

I could go with the Deltana "heavy duty" pocket door privacy latch, which has an upgraded cost of $24 in a split finish. I have this on my basement bathroom and the problems are that the thumb turn for the latch is smaller than a dime and you have to poke at the edge of it to get that little pull to pop up. This is okay for occasional use, I guess. and I suppose it is fine, but I think it looks a little cheap and flimsy if the rest of your door hardware is something like Emtek or Baldwin.

I just got the pricing on option #2. A split finish privacy latch with a real recessed thumb turn and the old school push-button sprung D-shaped handle that pops out of the edge to pull it closed. (Like on old pocket doors). I can see this being easier to use, particularly as I age, and again this house is going for time capsule status.

$468.

So $24 (or $12 if I didn't want a split finish) vs. $468. so a factor of 20x to 39X.

Again this isn't about "Boo hoo I can afford to pay $468 for a stupid piece of door hardware, if necessary", but more like "Why is there literally nothing in between?"

It does though, give me some background as to why you can walk into a $2M+ house like my employer's and the pocket doors have the $12 Deltana. I need one. It really adds up if you need eight.

Here's an example of how I save money: When I was pregnant with my oldest, who is now 18, places like Target didn't sell maternity clothes; you had to go somewhere like Pea in the Pod and spend $95 on a maternity tee shirt. So I decided to sew a bunch of clothes. Spent lots of money on fabric and patterns. And even cut some stuff out. And then went to Pea in the Pod and bought the $95 tee shirt anyway because I never finished sewing anything. I finally tossed out all that fabric when she was about 16.

So I like your approach of biting the bullet to get what's right in the first place. A half-a$$ed work around rarely works out. (Note that if someone is skilled and does a DIY project, I don't consider that half-a$$ed. I just have a tendency to have more enthusiasm than skill and patience.)

pal - please be sure to post pictures when you're done!

If the metal fabricators can make what you need, maybe get 40 pulls made. Silly, but perhaps more economical?

Again this isn't about "Boo hoo I can afford to pay $468 for a stupid
piece of door hardware, if necessary", but more like "Why is there
literally nothing in between?"

I think there is nothing in between these low and high
prices because there is a pretty small group of people that really sees a big
difference in the two items. (GW folks would, but they’re very detail oriented.)
And there’s an even smaller group that sees the difference and cares enough to pay the higher price. So the guys making the
Good Things have to price higher, because their production cost is higher, and
the market for their pricier product is smaller.

But you’re right, the production cost of the Good Thing is
hardly ever 20 times as high as the Mediocre Thing, so why do they price the
Good Thing (like your pocket door latch) at 20X? I think mostly because they’ve learned there is a small part
of the population that will pay it. So it makes sense to me they will charge
their (crazy) high price, as long as enough buyers will pay the price to make
their business model work.

In a way, this big space between the low cost of
mass-produced items and the high cost of luxury items creates an opening for artisan
made pieces. Before retiring, we fit right into this “sweet spot” in pricing for many years, when
we made our own line of hand forged iron hardware (three person shop.) Our iron cabinet pulls cost more than manufactured pulls, but less than Rocky Mountain Hardware (although we referred many folks to Rocky Mountain, because their work is excellent.) I wish
we still had a shop, because we probably could have fabricated something like
the brass edge pulls you need.

But I agree these shops are getting very hard to find. Most small
metal shops that are willing to do small custom orders have a limited capacity,
so they may not advertise or even be easy to find. Bigger well-known shops are
more likely to have a steady flow of lucrative bigger jobs. Eventually they structure
themselves so they’re no longer adept at making any profit on a small job…so
they discourage them.

Gooster's comment about Etsy is in line with my thinking, because basically you would benefit from finding a competant craftsperson who has a low enough overhead to welcome inquiries about small custom orders.

I always enjoyed the few customers we had who were
designers, because they always knew exactly what they wanted!

Of course you could have 40 door pulls made and sell the ones you don't need on eBay for a profit, but then you've given yourself a low-paying second job, taking into account all the hours of research you put into the acquisition!

I'm pretty sure the quality of this door hardware, both hinges and pocket door is 20 times better than that of the builder grade. And if you compare the pricing of the door latch to something simpler from Baldwin the pricing might be right, too.

I just don't know that I need 20 times better than builder grade. I might be happy with 5-10 times better, but that isn't a category that sems to exist with this hardware.

kswl, I'd also have the low-salaried job of trying to sell the thirty-odd I didn't need.

I'm sort of glad to hear you say that about the pocket door hardware. We ended up using what sounds like the Deltana. I know they were pretty inexpensive, but yeah, they sort of look it. But we needed 6 of them! I ad something else picked out, but they were too thick front to back, so I had to return them and it seemed like this is all there was. I honestly thought that I was just worn down by then and didn't try hard enough, so I'm glad to hear there is a specific gap in that realm. But every time I actually look at them, I feel like they are the weak link! Fortunately, those doors are usually open.

We went with Rocky Mountain Hardware edge pulls on our linen closet and modified upper pulls (less deep) on the same. Very pleased, once we got past the sticker shock.

Here are the little honeys we selected over safer choices (kids' college funds, our retirement, etc.).

Do you know which these are? They have a few classified as jamb pulls, a plain one and the Brut ones. But the current ones look thick compared to yours. (?) I like the Brut also (and I live in a brutalist house)

Oldbat2be, if those come up missing, you will know who the prime suspect is :-) Beautiful cabinets btw!

Ours are the CK-501R (rolled edge). ones.

We did have one challenge installing them. The edge onto which the pull is installed is not flat, but angles down a little towards the interior. Recessing the pull equally, would have meant the front of the pull would appear to be slanted up vs. flat, so DH compensated during the install with an uneven bevel. The picture should hopefully explain. It looks fine, closed, and I haven't thought of it since.

I had to search for the post in which I explained the above initially, and found your response right below mine, pal :)

"I would also suggest getting a different configuration of finger pull than oldbat2be has. Get one that is L shaped and wraps around to the Back face of the door or drawer and screws in from the back.

That way, pulling open the drawer puts the forces on the Metal Pull on the Back of the Drawer, not on the screws.

With the style of pull oldbat2be has, the forces of pulling on the drawer is on the Screw and its in a 90-degree angle to the direction of the drawer. Eventually these pulls can loosen because the screw can slowly enlarge the hole. Think about wiggling a pole in sticking out of the ground back and forth versus pushing and pulling straight up and down on it.

No disrespect intended and sorry to be a downer, but eventually you could have some problems with those pulls"

Edited to say, thanks jlc712! They were another DIY project (design in sketchup to get the dimensions right, then get doors/drawer fronts made, then install ourselves). (I use the term 'ourselves' loosely of course, it was all DH).

Of course, the CK 50Xs are discontinued. I told you I am the kiss of death for things.

All of the pulls I am finding have the essential problem of mounting on the edge instead of wrapping to the back, because I need something for a 1-3/8" door, not a 3/4" door.

I am a little less concerned about stresses on a door than on a drawer which may be weighted down, and with all the stress at 90-degrees.

These doors will be pivoting on very expensive hinges.

Has anybody looked at the vanity lighting on Rocky Mountain Hardware's site.

How about $6000 for a vanity light? Anyone?

Wow, I don't recall looking at their lighting before. We mostly referred customers to them for front door entry sets, which are beautiful. I see they now have some entry sets that are over $3000. That's a lot too, but somehow seems less crazy than a $6000 vanity light.