Saturday morning. Jacquela and Steven meet at Emerald Hill with Aaron Pratt from Central Texas Custom Cabinets to discuss how to install the Ikea pulls — vertical or horizontal — on specific cabinet doors in the kitchen.

Before Aaron arrives, Steven and Jacquela slice open a package or three with help from Bani, one of Aaron’s expert cabinetmakers. Then we try different positions and orientations — vertical at the middle of the tall door, vertical at the top of the tall door, horizontal at the top of the tall door, horizontal at the bottom of the upper door, vertical at the side of the upper door, how far from or close to the corner of the door, or in the middle of the door.

By the time Aaron arrives, we’ve decided to go with vertical on the tall pantry cabinets, lower and upper doors, positioning the pulls one inch from the corner of the door panel. At the sink, however, and at one door opposite the microwave, we elect to position the pulls horizontally, in the middle of the top line of the door, aligning the pulls with everything else nearby — creating a consistent pattern, with horizontal pulls for all lower cabinets and vertical pulls for all upper cabinets.

Steven observes — It is bizarre to so extensively debate something as mundane as a cabinet handle for a whole hour, but it is also a significant measure of how close we are to finishing the house that we spent an hour debating how and where to install cabinet handles.