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That homeowner's $300 drawer pull order changed my whole measuring system
Last Tuesday I finished installing a full kitchen in a remodel over in Maplewood. The homeowner handed me a list of 47 drawer pulls, all different sizes, and said they bought them from some boutique online. I measured each hole with my tape and a sharpie like I always do, but the spacing was way off on three of them. Turned out their pulls had metric centers, not standard, and I didn't catch it until the first one was drilled. I had to patch three holes with dowels and re-drill, which ate up my whole afternoon and cost me $60 in wasted time. Now I carry a cheap digital caliper in my apron at all times, no exceptions. Has anyone else run into metric hardware sneaking into an imperial job, or is it just me? Maybe there's a better way to spot this before the drill bit touches the wood.
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harper191mo ago
Man, come on, this is on you and not the hardware. A tape and a sharpie is not a measuring tool, its a guess with extra steps, and you said yourself the spacing was off on three pulls before you drilled, so the warning was right there. Metric pulls are not "sneaking" into anything, half the stuff in a modern kitchen comes from overseas now, thats just the world we live in. You could have laid all 47 pulls on the counter and checked the holes against each other before touching a single bit, no caliper needed for that. Buying a tool after you messed up is fine but the real lesson is you skipped the check step, not that inches still rule the earth.
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