The Quirky DIY For Kitchen Cabinet Drawer Pulls That's Also Renter-Friendly

Quirky kitchen cabinet drawer pulls (or kitschen, as the case may be) and renting usually don't go hand in hand. Usually, the knobs or handles on cupboards and drawers tend to be plain and functional, particularly if the unit is a newer one. Function, and not form, rules the day. Replacing the knobs as a renter is a lot of work. However, some statement kitchen drawer pulls made from polymer clay and acrylic paints are all you need to put together a renter-friendly knob upgrade. 

There are many renter-friendly workarounds for outdated cabinets, but this one is quite simple. These DIY kitchen cupboard pulls start with some basic oven-bake clay like Ifergoo white oven-bake polymer clay. With your mad crafty skills, you'll use a few choice sculpting tools for polymer clay to shape the formless polymer into something worthy of the title "quirky" — fun food shapes would look right at home in the kitchen. Depending on the needs of your project, you may also require a thick dowel to iron out the wrinkles in the clay, in a manner of speaking. The addition of acrylic paint, along with some brushes, takes the polymer clay from blob to faux baguette in the space of an afternoon or two.

Because polymer clay requires heat to set it, this DIY project also calls for baking sheets so that you can bake the clay in the oven. Those will be lined with foil or parchment paper to make clean-up simpler. Finally, you'll want to break out your hot glue gun because there's no way to show off your creations unless they're glued onto something. In this case, you'll attach them your kitchen's drawers and cupboard handles to make the space uniquely and quirkily yours with an easy way to upgrade your drawer hardware.

To make the clay handles, you'll want to measure the amount of the clay in proportion to the size and shape of the drawer and cabinet pulls. You're going to cap the existing hardware with the bespoke clay handles, which you'll shape into food items (or other quirky designs of your choice) from the polymer clay. If the pulls are long, foodstuffs like hot dogs, baguettes, and pickles are among the items that would work for the craft. If you have round kitchen cabinet knobs, make round items like red and green apples, bagels, and doughnuts with little sprinkles. You want to make each item slightly bigger than the pull you're covering to ensure the existing hardware is fully hidden.

Once you're happy with your design, you'll bake the clay items according to the directions on the package — baking times and temperatures depend on the brand. Once the pulls are cool and dry, paint them to look like the food items in question. Once the paint is dry, use the hot glue gun to fasten them onto the pulls. 

It's best to use polymer clay for this instead of the air-dry kind. The former is a synthetic clay that must be baked to set. It's good for detail work, like you'll be doing for the kitchen pulls. (This is why it's used to make items with small details, like jewelry.) Unlike air-dry clay, it'll stay soft until you bake it, allowing you to work with it over a longer period to get the details on your foodie handles correct. Polymer clay is also less brittle and doesn't break quite as easily as air-dry clay does when it's dropped, offering a forgiving material from which to make your pulls.

If you're concerned that you won't be able to take the DIY kitchen handles off the cabinet pulls once you leave your rental, you have a couple of options. Some people find that a dab of alcohol loosens the remnants of hot glue. This trick should make it easier to remove the clay toppers from the cupboard hardware. However, it seems just as logical to temporarily replace the hardware in your rental with something like Homdiy 5-inch brushed nickel handles. Once you're ready to move, you'll completely remove the faux food decorations and the pulls beneath them in one fell swoop and put the old pulls back in place. No need to try to separate the clay handles from the metal pulls. And as a bonus, you can bring your quirky pulls with you to your next rental. All you'd need to do is replace the hardware in the new abode with your bespoke handles. 

If you go this route, you'll need to add the replacement pulls and some screws to your supplies list. You'll also take your electric drill out of the toolbox for the afternoon. The drill allows you to remove the original pulls from the cupboards, while the new hardware ensures that you won't ruin the original pulls that came with the apartment or rental house. Finally, if you're concerned about the original pulls getting lost in the shuffle, drop them (and the screws to go with them) into a large ziptop plastic freezer bag. Then, put them somewhere for safekeeping until you're ready to put them back on the drawers and cabinets before you move.