Thanks for the great feedback! My wife is totally on board for drawers. I think we were both surprised at the volume and emotion this topic inspired. I was able to call the cabinet guy (I LOVE SKYPE) and talk. His concern was for the way the kitchen would look with drawers. He doesn't like pull outs either! So, we are good and headed the same direction. I didn't ask what brand of soft close he used, but we will have Blum in our new house! Several suggested getting a different cabinet guy. While we'll get a second opinion, I realized our guy was actually trying to make sure my wife would be happy with the way the finished product looked. Once I told him we were fine with how drawers would look, he was all on board. I think doing this from 7000 miles will have more challenges in communication that most, but we'll get there. I'd love to be at all the meetings, but I'm happy to serve where I am. I've got a great wife who is doing a wonderful job staying within budget and still getting great things for our house. Thanks for all the input. I'm sure we'll have more questions along the way. We are just about to go to contract and this was the last budget item to figure out! Turning dirt soon... Ray

What I don't like about the soft close mechanism is the weird little scootch it makes when pulling in that last small distance. It's has a revolting, horror-movie quality for me, like the receding tongue of a nightmare-animal. (I can hardly write about it w/o shivering - an overeager cab salesperson wanting to demonstrate them can send me practically running out of the showroom!) But aside from that sick-making movement, it seems to me, to be the almost perfect representation of the sheer laziness of the world we live in now. How much effort does it really take to close your own drawers correctly (and quietly)? Is everyone's life so raddled by stress or desperate haste that they can't restrain themselves from slapping the drawers back? And it also fails my standard of desirable simpleness. I agree that they are appealing to the gadget-minded - when we first saw them in a kitchen showroom, my DH could hardly wait to disembowel a drawer assembly to figure it out. But I'll keep closing the drawers in our house, by hand, thank you. (I have no idea what a soft-close toilet is and, may it please the Gods, I'll never encounter one.) This is the one thing I don't want to upgrade to. If only I could acquire a similar, visceral, distaste for Marmoleum, high CFM vent fans, and expensive English faucets; my kitchen reno budget would be much less strained. L

We just finished our remodel and one of the drawers has that issue. Installer came out to adjust and it didn't help. I suggested the possibility that the wood might be warped and that is indeed what the problem was. The company will replace it for me. You shouldn't have to try and do it yourself. The job isn't done until they've made sure the drawers close correctly.

Lindsey, you have undermount drawer slides. OP has side mount slides. Two whole different animals. SW Wong, did you check all the mounting screws in the slides to make sure that they are properly seated? If one is standing proud, that could be the problem. Check all of the screws, the ones that mount the slide to the cabinet and the ones that mount the slide to the drawer. I have some Accuride and KV side mount slides but no soft close versions. When I remove and replace a drawer, I have to get kinda' tough and force the drawer to close. For some reason, the slide has quite a bit of resistance to closing. After that first 'force to close' , the drawer functions fine. Again, I do not have the soft close versions. Also, check the slides for a manufacturer's label. If these are a generic, no-name slide, then the chances of just having a bad slide is probably higher than with a recognized brand. You may end up needing to replace the slide. Not a fun job but not all that difficult to do, either.