That one time a client told me my cabinet handles looked like bad jewelry

I was installing a kitchen for a lady in St. Paul last month, and she took one look at my handle placement and said they looked like a cheap necklace. She was right, I had just eyeballed the spacing instead of measuring each door. Now I always use a cardboard template I cut out, and it took maybe 20 extra minutes but the difference is night and day. Has anyone else had a customer catch something obvious that you just got lazy about?

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faith124mo ago

Honestly, that cardboard template sounds like overkill. I mean, I've been hanging cabinets for 8 years in Minneapolis and I still eyeball handle placement. Like, half my clients don't even notice if things are a quarter inch off. And the ones who do? They're usually the type who'll find something to complain about no matter what. My dad taught me this trick back in '07 - just use your thumb as a spacer between handles. Works fine, saves all that time cutting templates, and nobody's ever sent me back to fix it.

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evan_harris144mo ago

See, I gotta push back a little on this one, @faith12. Is it really that serious where we need to act like eyeballing is some kind of sacred trade secret? I mean, I get that thumb trick works for you (more power to you), but I've seen dudes eyeball handle placement and then drill a hole into a drawer face that's completely misaligned with the one below it. That's a bigger headache than just cutting a template ahead of time. And honestly, saying clients don't notice a quarter inch off is kinda wild - maybe they're just being polite or waiting until you're gone to curse your name. But hey, different strokes for different folks, right?

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