HOW TO MAKEOVER A KITCHEN ON A BUDGET
When you’ve just finished grad school and bought your first house and you weren’t born with a trust fund…you’ve got to get creative with fixing stuff up and renovating.
This kitchen is a perfect example of how to change the look completely, spending a minimal amount of money.
It was dark, dreary, the lighting was bad, and it lacked functional storage and places to sit. Wasn’t the worst kitchen, but it could get better.
This kitchen makeover required a lot of paint and elbow grease and maybe a few trips to ikea. Painting the kitchen cabinets was the priority. (we’ll have a tutorial on how to paint kitchen cabinets soon)
We painted the kitchen cabinets BM White Cloud (OC 130) in a semigloss and we painted the walls the same color in Pearl (Pearl is this amazing sheen that BM offers that’s a step above eggshell in shininess and ability to clean, but a step below sheen than satin- I find that it’s the perfect paint for bathrooms and kitchens that are going to need to be getting cleaned a lot)
Because yellow is my favorite color in the world, we painted the ceiling yellow. It took about 6 different paint samples of yellow to get the brightest rightest one….and guess what- I didn’t write it down and forgot what color yellow is. (cue crying now). Have no fear, because I’ve got a few options for you.
Trust me…if you’re going to paint your kitchen ceiling yellow, you’re going to want to get a few samples and test them out first anyway.
Next on the list…that light fixture HAD to go. It was fluorescent lighting and made me feel like we lived in an office kitchen. It was terrible. The plan had always been to find a chandelier and paint it high gloss black. I searched online forever- was contemplating buying a new cheap one because I wasn’t finding anything that would work on craigslist and finally, lo and behold…a perfect sized chandelier for $20 on craigstlist appeared and I did what any rational wife would do- sent my husband right over to buy that thing.
Next: the STORAGE issue. The people who had lived here before us had JUST renovated the kitchen in previous few years but had almost NO kitchen cabinets. Not sure if they were trying to save money, or they were extreme minimalists and owned one pan.
Not only did the kitchen lack storage, it lacked seating areas. We decided to hit two birds with one stone and use a best cabinet from ikea for storage and a bench. We also got another tall besta cabinet that fit against the wall that we used as a pantry.
While at Ikea buying our best cabinets, a quick run in to the As-IS section (supposed to be the cheapest section, but somehow ends up costing you the mostest money) and snagged these white bar chairs for a steal. That little purchase was a lesson in “why not to buy something just because it’s on sale if you haven’t measured the space beforehand because you’re not going to save anymore in the long run when you have to have a table made to fit your chairs and space”.
See that pretty table? As far as custom tables go, it was very cheap to have made, because our good friend (and neighbor) made it for us out of a huge slab of beetle kill pine that he got for free, so all we had to pay for was his time and the other materials.
It was an extremely skinny space, but with the table, we were able to fit two people sitting in the kitchen along with a few more on the bench. Everyone hangs out in the kitchen. Always.