[andrew.cox11]

all horizontal does look nice, but here are some things to think about before going fully horizontal:

- our over-the-range microwave sticks out a little bit farther than a wall cabinet, and so one of our handles hits it when you fully open that door -- you might try to design around this by having single-door cabinets with hinges on the opposite side from anything sticking out farther than the cabinet doors, or you could mount the handles in a position other than the center of the door (move them away from the hinge)... in my case its a 30" double-door cabinet and if i move the handles on just the affected cabinet it won't match the rest of the kitchen... so i don't think i can really fix this, i'll just have to teach myself not to open this door all the way...

- on single-door cabinets, which *aren't* next to an obstacle, be sure to fully think through which way is most natural for the door to open... i've got at least one door which i always instinctively try to open the wrong way (and if i wanted to move the hinges, first i would have to buy a new door since the holes are drilled, and anyway it would duplicate the problem above on the other side of the microwave...)

so if we did it over again, i'd probably want vertical mounting of the handles on the wall cabinets...

[alloztome]

I was just in IKEA New Haven-I have also chosen Lansa handles for my Ulriksdal oak cabinets and I am undecided about the direction to put them.

While wandering through the kitchen area-which has been updated since I was there-I saw the handles were mostly installed horizontally. It does give a more uniform look but I also noticed that in one of the "model" kitchens they used what I -think- are the Sorbo doors-a soft to the touch dark grey finish.

On the corner base cabinet with the wire shelves-which I have- the ends of the handles had made deep gouges in the grey surface of the door-exposing the composite underneath. When you pull the handle to open the door the ends scrape the other half of the door. In that case I guess you have no choice other than a vertical placement of the handle.

It's a bit sad that IKEA didn't know this but I'm glad I saw it.