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

I think you should try again asking about the Hettich. Also ask how easy they are to adjust, if they have a wearing in time, and how easy it is to remove and replace drawers. I've had Blum for about 5 years. They also have the expanding hinges (go past 90ð), which are very dear, but I wouldn't have anything else for my doors. Some people don't like how stiff the drawers are when they're first installed and remove the closers before they wear in or can be adjusted. There's nothing I hate more than losing stuff behind a drawer. Blum are so easy to remove and replace. You just pull the orange part on the bottom to the side to unlatch them, and pull the slides out and set the box in place to put them back. On advice from GW/KF I put a Roll Out Tray Shelf (also with the Blum slides) on the bottom of my big sink cabinet, which makes it really easy to get to the back, and especially easy to just lift out when the plumber needs access, with all the bottles and sponges still in place. Blum is excellent. So ask again about the Hettich and see if people are as pleased.

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

I'm back...happy to report nothing disintegrated in my hands, no stripped screws, etc. :) Really rather fascinating how that little mechanism works! There's plenty of extra clearance for the door to swing, corner unimpeded; so, not sure what the reason is for that large a gap. It's not so much the discrepancy in the gaps between the hinge side and the door bumper side (so, I'll just stick with the little nubby that's already there). Is this how all new cabinets are? Seems "Blum" is the in thing these days, so I'd imagine lots of folks are wrestling with this -- or maybe it's just us 'partial overlay' people. I don't imagine those who order inset cabinets have this issue. Thanks again for all the help. Now, moving on to whether I want to risk drilling new holes because the installers set my oversized drawer pull too high! :/