A few weeks ago I wrote about our various plans for updates we want to around our house this year. However, after lots of discussions, we’ve decided to completely overhaul our kitchen before we tackle anything else! These are our budget kitchen makeover plans.
I’ve never really liked our kitchen. It’s dark, thanks to the fact that it faces north and the previous owners chose dark wood cabinets, dark flooring and black sideboards.
While I would absolutely love a new kitchen it’s just not something we can justify spending a large amount of money on when we plan to move in around five years time.
We had actually planned to get a professional company in to respray the cupboards and repaint the tile, but we estimated that would be at least a couple of thousand pounds and it just wasn’t something we wanted to spend out on this year.
When explaining all of the above to some of my friends over drinks a few weeks ago, they suggested we just do it ourselves. I said I was nervous about it being such a huge job but they all offered to come and help for a day so we can get it done more quickly – a necessity when we have a toddler running about!
So after lots of discussions, that’s what we decide to do. Next weekend we plan to deep clean, fill, sand and maybe start painting. The following week we will paint the cupboards and drawers. All 26 of them!
Budget Kitchen Makeover: What We Need To Do
So here is what we intend to do in our kitchen.
- Deep clean
- Repaint woodwork, door frames and radiator.
- Paint walls and ceiling
- Paint kitchen door
- Paint all cupboard doors and drawers.
- Add new handles/knobs
- Frost glass cupboard doors
- Cover sideboards in vinyl*
- Cover tiles in vinyl tile stickers
- Install splashback behind the cooker
- Add shelving and other accessories
*Our sideboards have a weird lip on them which means they can’t be fully covered. We’re hoping we can install vinyl just over the existing sideboard tops but we’re not sure at the moment.
What Colours Have We Chosen?
I really want to paint the kitchen a sage green colour. While I love grey, we have it in loads of other rooms, so I wanted something a little bit different in here.
Pete would have preferred yellow but as I cook more and spend more time in the kitchen, I won the toss on the agreement he could choose the exact shade. In the end, we’ve gone for Dulux Tranquil Dawn.
For the cupboards, we’re using V33 Soft Grey. This paint is on the more expensive side but is supposed to be really good quality.
Everything else will be white.
Stick On Vinyl Tiles
We did repaint our tiles around a year ago but they didn’t come out very well and neither of us was particularly happy with the result.
Rather than retiling or messing them up with another paint job, we plan to cover them stick on tiles that can be purchased from Amazon. We plan to use these metro style tiles.
Budget Kitchen Makeover: Flooring
For the floor, we plan to cover the exiting tiles with either vinyl from the roll or vinyl tiles. We haven’t decided on exactly what to use yet, as we’re going to wait until everything else is painted.
Tapi Carpets have a very useful tool that lets you upload a picture and see what various types of flooring would look like in your room. We’ve had lots of fun playing with this and it will definitely be useful when it comes to making a final decision.
At the moment, we’re thinking either grey slate effect or tile pattern floor. Yet to find one we both agree on though!
Acessories
Our kitchen is actually pretty small so there’s not a lot of room for adding accessories. The main thing we want to do is add some shelving for cookery books and some hooks so we can hang up sieves, colanders and ladles.
While I’m really excited to get going on this project, I’m also really nervous too. I’m worried I won’t like it once it’s done and of course, it’s going to be two weekends with lots of upheavals.
Hopefully, the end result will be worth it!
