If by chance you need to know how to fix a kitchen or vanity cabinet door that has a crooked handle, I have the answer to your problem. It’s really a rather simple operation. You are going to need a few tools though. Just common ordinary power tools that everyone should have hanging around the house. The drill bit that you are going to need is a three sixteenths thick bit.

Usually situations like this happened because the installer was careless when he drilled for the handles. Hopefully they are not so bad that a correction can’t be made. These tips will apply to Formica cabinet doors, Thermofoil, and real wood styles as well.

Tools Needed

1)Power drill
2)Extension cord
3)Shop Vac or dust pan
4)Three sixteenths thick drill bit
5)Phillips screwdriver
read How to Fix Crooked Cabinet Handles

How short are you? This could determine where you should drill the 3/16” hole in the cabinet door for the handle or knob. I’ll never forget the year when I drilled all of the cabinet doors for the new cupboards I had installed in my home and the wife got upset with me. She is about five inches shorter than me. I had placed the handles where we would normally install them for any customer. Well the cupboard doors were all special order raised panel maple. So, there really was no inexpensive way to cure her frustration. We decided that she needed to spend some time in therapy to get over it.

Not really, in all honesty she never again said a single word about it. The height of the people using the kitchen cupboards should be taken into consideration though.


I generally drill the cabinet door for the knob in line with the horizontal line of the raised panel door frame. This usually measures in the neighborhood of about two and a half inches up or down from the outside edge of the door frame. Then I just center the hole in the middle of the frame from left to right.

If the doors are flat and do not have any frame, then I will measure the height of the center of a standard drawer, which is about three to two and seven eights inches, and install the knob that distance down from the top of a base door. From left to right, I will mark the location about an inch and a half in from the outside edge of the cabinet door.

Some people like to measure half the distance of the door frames in both directions and the place the knob there.

There really is not a standard for the cabinet door handles or knobs placements. Just make sure that you install the kitchen or bathroom vanity cabinet door knobs to look balanced and centered correctly.