A customer told me my drawer slides sounded ‘cheap’ so I switched to soft-close

I built a custom kitchen for a client in Austin last spring. Everything looked great, nice maple cabinets, solid construction. But after they lived with it for a week, the wife called me and said the drawers sounded like a cheap motel door slamming shut. I was using standard side-mount ball bearing slides, nothing wrong with them really. She asked if I could swap in soft-close undermount slides instead. So I went back, pulled all the drawers out, and replaced them with Blumotion slides. Took me about 6 hours total but man, what a difference. The silence was almost eerie at first. Now I only use soft-close on every job unless the customer specifically asks for something else. Has anyone else had a client call out something you thought was fine?

2 comments

2 Comments

averym8226d ago

Come on, man. You got played. Those standard ball bearing slides are perfectly good hardware that's been working fine for decades. People just got brainwashed by all those HGTV shows into thinking everything has to be whisper quiet and butter smooth. Your client heard a noise that every normal drawer has made since the invention of the drawer and decided it was a problem. Now you're spending extra money and time on something that adds zero structural value to the cabinets. Wait till one of those soft close mechanisms breaks in a few years and your client has to pay you to come back and fix a drawer that won't even close all the way. You basically trained her that normal wood sounds are unacceptable, which is just ridiculous.

willow24426d agoTop Commenter

Ha, reminds me of my aunt who replaced her perfectly good fridge because the ice maker made a clicking noise.