KOHLERK-11371-CP Forté 24-Inch Bathroom Towel Bar, Polished Chrome

These are fantastic towel rods; I love the smooth lack of ornamentation. I couldn't live without them after installing four 30" rods in one bathroom, so I just installed a pair of 24" rods in a different bathroom. As one reviewer clearly suffered an incompetent installer, I was mindful of the installation process, and I'd like to provide some notes. If you think I'm overthinking the problem, go study Japanese woodworking, or contemplate why some people will pay some other people $300 to cook a single meal for them. Compared to this, towel bars are easy. People who don't have law degrees are often just as smart in different ways. I'm an amateur but I'm guessing that these thoughts all run through the mind of a good handyman. If you can't afford such a handyman (my contractor was the best available and we joked that he couldn't afford me as I insisted on installing these rods myself) then don't complain about the rods. They are a well-designed and well-constructed raw material. Select a contractor or take care yourself consistent with your likelihood of discriminating minor installation quirks, which fortunately can be corrected after the fact by partly reversing these instructions. Or, denial isn't just a river in Africa, it's a life skill. Learn to live with the work you can afford or carry out.First, study the rods themselves closely on arrival, before installation. Understand the role of each aspect of the design, which were deliberate decisions by thoughtful engineers. Check the screws holding the rods together. Try the rods flush against a kitchen counter; do they look perfect, while they're still returnable? They should, although on your wall may be another matter.The crux of the installation is to get the centers of the two posts on the mounting plates exactly 24" apart, to an accuracy at the absolute limit of your ability to perceive or measure. Every step of the process gives you a chance to correct previous errors, if they are not too great.First, the towel bars come with templates. Masking tape these templates into position, using a level to check that they are absolutely level. Now, there are mild printing errors in such templates, the paper is not dimensionally stable with respect to humidity, and most importantly, walls aren't perfectly flat. Using either a metal ruler or a tape measure stretched flat with all your strength, figure out where 24" apart really is, and mark it. Now, drill 1/8" guide holes. Do your best to find the centers of your marks.Remove the templates and measure again. In my case I drilled 1/4" holes (although in hindsight I would have loved to have gone down 1/64"), and I cheated them in my guide holes to compensate for the errors that I measured at this step.At this step I vacuumed each hole, then filled them with white acrylic artist paint (from a tube) before inserting and hammering flush the anchors. In my walls (some odd plaster over concrete in a postwar New York City apartment) I find anchors frustrating without a little help like this. I gave considerable thought to choosing the best possible glue here, before remembering that artist acrylic paint is one of the strongest and easiest to use glues available. I could have then oiled or bike-greased the screws to make sure they'd come out if ever necessary; I skipped this step, which was probably a mistake. If these anchors fail, I'm tearing them out of the wall and preparing a broader area in any case, so this oversight doesn't bother me.Now, screw in each mounting base, leaving a little wiggle. Slide on the towel bars and press to make them look perfect. Remove, and study what happened to the screws in the upper slots. One could be forgiven for assuming that these slots are to correct for screws that aren't vertically aligned, but this would be exactly missing their point. In fact, the towel bars can tolerate a bit of twist to these posts (they don't have to be square to vertical and horizontal) and using the play in the slot adjusts the exact distance between the pair of posts. You want this distance to be exactly 24". Measure, then make it 24" and tighten the screws, and try the bars again. Compare with how the slots looked before when you wiggled the bar into trial position. Because there was different play on both sides, the trial positioning may have used more play from one slot than the other. Fairly share the correction between the two slots. When you're all done fiddling, let any anchor aid (such as my artist paint) dry completely before loading the anchor with the weight of the towel bars and towels.The art here is to thoroughly enjoy being more critical and aware of the towel bars, their position and essential nature, than one will ever be again in use. Remember that Steve Jobs' adoptive father took the same care with backs of furniture as the front. This point of view is a way of life.

you know how to assemble them properly. I have noticed that some folks complain there are large and small gaps between the bar ends where the bar meets the mounting assemblies. Gaps exist at one or both ends of the bar which tend to trap and pull threads in their towels. The design tends to encourage this problem, but whether the problem exists depends largely on how the bar assembly is put together and mounted to the wall. Simply apply some common sense before mounting, forcefully push the pieces together (tightly) and space the ends conservatively close together before drilling the mounting holes. The gaps should end up being minimal to none and not trap your towels as the designers intended. After mounting several of these, I have yet to experience this problem, although it's clear how it can exist.

Works great. Bought 2 for the bathroom and have one over the other. Included template makes drilling a breeze.

Okay, so this towel bar has a nice sleek design and if you're using other Kohler Forte items in your bath then your probably stuck using this one to match. It installs easy (the template is a huge help). I've read complaints about it not being strong on the wall. Ours is screwed into 2 studs (totally lucked out on that), so I don't see a problem there. The reason I give 3 stars is a problem others have reported on and we've now experienced TWICE. When pulling a towel off the bar, a loop of the towel can get caught in the seam where the metal bar meets the curved piece that mounts to the wall, and before you know it you've pulled six inched of thread out of your towel. So the design is fine, it's just the engineering that leaves a bit to be desired for.

Looks great in new bathroom. Very sturdy. As other reviewers mentioned, there is a seam that catches towel threads occasionally. It doesn't bother me, but I have notices threads sticking out of it. Looks great installed and large enough for two bath towels to hand folded in half.

It was the exact item seen at Plumbing store, but this cost much less. Only thing it didn't have was a template to tape to the wall, so had to do a lot of remeasuring and rechecking and still was off a very small amount. I like templates.

The product was exactly what was described, shipped in perfect shape and on time. I had tried to order this product thru a "big box" store, waited for weeks. I was told it was on backorder and had to wait weeks more to get it. I saw the same item on Amazon and had it in a week.

I'm sure the towel bar is as lovely as the Kohler Forte faucet I ordered at the same time. The faucet arrived and has been installed. Looks and works great!It's been weeks, but still no towel bar.