Wednesday, March 21, 2007

My Quest for the Holy Drawer Pulls

For the past week I have been a pregnant girl on a mission: to buy new drawer pulls for the baby's dresser. I spent an entire afternoon scrubbing the dresser, getting literally years of grunge off of it. Then I sprayed orange oil wood cleanser on it to make it all pretty and shiny. But the one eyesore was that the middle drawer had four holes for drawer knobs but only two mismatched knobs on it.
It was easy to find pretty knobs for the middle drawer. I bought two really cute knobs with jumping sheep on them, and a couple of brushed nickel knobs for the other two spaces. I knew they would look fantastic, but the nickel knobs didn't match the other drawer pulls, which were brass. They were also tarnished and tacky, so I got new pulls that matched the knobs to replace them. Now, when I went to the hardware store, the most popular spacing between the holes that screw into the dresser is 3" apart; in fact, there were only a couple of pulls in a different size. I (mistakenly) concluded that the dresser at home must have the same spacing. You see, I wasn't planning on buying new pulls, so I didn't measure the spacing. Besides, if they didn't fit, I could bring them back.
Well, they didn't fit. At least I was smart enough to hold the pull up against the screws on the inside of the drawer before I opened the package, so I could return the pulls. I measured the distance between the holes this time, and it looked like they were about 5" apart. It was too late to return to the hardware store that day, so the following day I returned to the hardware store. This store had a couple of pulls that were 4" apart, and a few 3-3/4" apart but no 5" guys, so I just took them back. I waited until my next set of days off to go to another hardware store, since it's not in the neighbourhood.
So yesterday, I went to the other hardware store and, although they had a pretty small selection of 5" pulls to choose from, they did have a nice set that matched the knobs. I happily took them home only to find they didn't fit either! I re-measured the distance, apparently more carefully this time, and the distance between the screws was 4-1/4". ARRRGGGGGHHH!
Suddenly, I remembered that my own dresser needs new pulls as well; one's bent and one's broken in half. Maybe the new ones would fit my dresser instead, and I could put the knobs from my dresser on the baby's dresser, since they matched. So I went into my room and measured the holes from the pulls against the screws inside the drawer. They didn't match perfectly but they were really close. Maybe I could manipulate the screws to make it fit. So I opened one of the packages and gave it a try. No dice, and now I couldn't return one of the pulls. I measured one of the drawers to see if I could return the other three and buy the right size. The distance was 4-5/8". What the hell was up with these spaces!?! Goddamn antique dressers!
So, the new plan is to use the pulls I bought, but to drill a new hole in each drawer so they will fit. The pulls should cover up the old holes and I figure I will never find ones that fit such oddball spacing anyway. Besides, there is nothing sexier than a pregnant girl with power tools! I should dress up and take photos.