Well you could choose different door handle color and just deal with the hinges yourself if you really want something other than brass. If you like brass then use it as I see nothing wrong with it. I think brass goes with anything. In my old house my master had brushed brass and brushed nickel faucets/towelbars/towel rings and I used brushed nickle for the knobs and handles for the cabinets there and the mirrors. So even if you wanted to use some with a silver finish you could get something that has a little brass on it and tie it in. The door to the bath had iron handles and black hinges. Here is a pic where you can kind of see it: Towel bar has outer ring in brushed brass and the point that holds the ring and the rest is nickel. Some brass finishes and others that I think would work well too. Bronze Brushed brass vs. shiny (not sure what your hinges will be). antique brass Black also would look good. I'm not a matchy match person though and I don't think I could do all the same color on all my fixtures in the house. In our new house the baths are brushed nickel, door handles are ORB and light fixtures varies from iron look to antique brass, and brushed nickel in the baths. Kitchen faucet is brushed stainless and the pendant above it is antique brass with an amber shade. Bath knobs and pulls will be brushed nickel, not sure about the kitchen, but I'm leaning towards ORB, pewter, or antique brass due to the dark cabinets and wanting it to not stick out too much.

I think it's nice to mix metals when they relate to each other. Like black & pewter - but I'm biased because I have a room with black, pewter, and chrome in it :) For your situation I think you can get away with it because so much in a kitchen is always going to be silver or brushed nickel. Pots & pans are often silver on the outside, silverware is often silver colored, and if you have any stainless steel appliances they read as brushed nickel or silver. In other words - you'd be hard pressed to outfit a kitchen with everything being gold toned (even the trim on the toaster) so silver is expected there. So I think it recedes into the background & no one would expect them to match. Now ... if you have a foyer off the living room and the foyer had gold light fixtures & gold accessories & gold handles on the closet doors - but the living room was heavily accented with bright silver then that might look incongruous. But you'd need a lot of each metal for people to notice. It would probably need to be on the order of "Gold wallpaper with gold leafed table" versus "chrome tables & lamps & candlesticks everywhere" for people to see it.

Kailuamom, I love those SS pulls! Thanks for the link. I went to the eBay link and was initially determined to buy them for my cabinets. However, as much as I love them, I realized they probably wouldn't look too good on my cabinets. Our house, built in the early-1990's, has the medium oak cabinets that were so popular at that time, and they have never had any cabinet pulls or knobs on them. I've been wanting to give the cabinets a little facelift by adding some cabinet pulls. The overall look of the home is more traditional (although I tend toward a little more clean lines and don't play that up a lot). As a result, while I really like the look of the pulls you have, I'm thinking they probably wouldn't be the best for our particular circumstances. Maybe in our next house ... I have a couple questions, though. I really want to use SS or brushed nickel pulls. We need to replace our current SS faucet soon, and it wil definitely be another SS faucet. However, the exposed hinges on the cabinets are darker (brass, I think?)---the same as the door knobs and hinges on all the doors throughout the house. So now I'm not sure what to do. I guess I could replace all of the hinges on the cabinets, which sounds daunting, but is that a good idea, since all the the other doors in the house have the brass hinges and door knobs? Or does it matter? Also, the darker brass hinges seem to blend into the woodgrain now, but if I replaced them with the SS hinges I think they would really stand out---not exactly the part of the cabinets I want to feature. So what would all of you recommend? I wish the hinges on the cabinet doors didn't show, but since they do am I going to have to use brass hardware if I want to add pulls to the doors? If so, I'll have to consider whether I'd be just as happy continuing without any pulls on the cabinets. I definitely would want something with fairly clean lines---maybe just a simple arch would be okay. As you can see, the more I try to decide the more confused I get. I really admire all of you who have had to make so many decisions in outfitting your kitchens. I hope to do a major remodel in the future, and I'm both dreading and eagerly looking forward to it.

Hi, If you change the exterior locks pick the style you like, but keep the brand the same so you can rekey all the locks the same. You may also research it to find out if there is a padlock that uses the same brand of key then you can rekey the padlock to fit your house. Comes in handy for garages or storage sheds. Good Luck Woodbutcher