Slam those Cabinets (Quietly)
August 4th, 2005 by Marcos
I like quiet. In fact, hearing doors and drawers slam shut is like sandpaper to my soul. Sadly, my wife loves slamming doors and cabinets. Not because she is mad, just because she doesn’t see much point in being gentle. We had dinner with some friends recently, and they actually paid people to come in and remodel their kitchen. Hiring people, can you believe it! Anyway, the kitchen looked great. One of the coolest features were these little shock absorbers that gently absorbed door trauma even if you flung them shut from a distance. Very cool! Made by a German company called Blum. Available fairly reasonably from CabinetParts.com
Picking out sinks can be a chore. Under-mount, drop-in, stainless, granite, single basin, double basin, etc. There are a lot of options and a lot of manufacturers. I’m partial to stainless under-mount sinks myself, I like the clean lines and integrated look. Drop-in sinks look. . .well, they look dropped-in. But then I’m super anal about this kind of minutia. The sexy sink in the image above is the “Mystic” series from Elkay. Very stylish, but it might not meet your practical or thrifty needs. Below you will find a non-exhaustive list of a few of the major sink manufacturers. If you are in the market, give them a browse. 
Next time you are cooking that huge, bubbling, spattering, exploding pot of spaghetti on your cooktop, think back to this post. Spectra Metals is a company by Lake Elsinore, CA. that fabricates a variety of metals for commercial and residential applications. Their unique stainless steel backsplashes caught my eye on ebay. Do an ebay search for “stainless backsplash” and you might find Spectra’s latest offerings, or those of some similar competitors. No one likes trying to remove spaghetti stains from sheetrock, or in our case, the sheetrock where there don’t happen to be gaping holes in the walls. Either way, a stylish backsplash makes for an attractive solution to the age-old pasta on the wall problem.