Kitchen Updates on a Budget

I have been tired of the way our kitchen looks for a while now.  The problem is, we are currently renting, so we didn’t want to put too much money into renovations or updates for someone else’s house.  I decided to challenge myself with updating the kitchen on a very strict budget...and it worked!  So how can you do  kitchen updates on a budget?  I’m happy to share the steps with you.

Kitchen Hardware

My starting point was hardware.  The kitchen cabinets never had drawer pulls or knobs, and years of wear and tear had pulled paint off of the edges of the cabinets and quite honestly, it looked really bad.  I’m always drawn to Early Americana or Farmhouse styles for décor, and so I was trying to figure out how to bring my taste into a very outdated kitchen. 

I was browsing on Temu of all places, and I saw cabinet and drawer hardware that looked exactly like the ones I love from Restoration Hardware, but at a fraction of the price.  I decided to order them.  I told myself that if they arrived and were really poor quality, I had only spent about $17 on them.  To my extreme pleasure, they were fantastic!

Next, I went round and round about adding beadboard on part of the walls and as the backsplash (and I could repurpose a roll of beadboard wallpaper that I used in our travel trailer renovation) or if I wanted to just add some peel and stick tiles for the backsplash.  Again, this is our rental house, and we will probably only be here another 2 years...so minimal expenditure was the goal.  In the end, I found a few packs of peel and stick tiles that were in the clearance section of Walmart.  I spent under $10 for them, and even though they were not the color I wanted in my kitchen, I knew I could paint over them. 

New Backsplash

I will say that peel and stick tiles are not always sticky, so I added some spray adhesive to the backs as I put them up.  24 hours later, I used a little super glue in the corners that weren’t completely stuck, and it worked great! I also ran a bead of water-sealant caulk along the edge.

One of the hardest parts for me was choosing paint colors.  I knew I wanted to have a 2-toned kitchen, but my mind was all over the place with paint swatches ranging from a cornflower blue to a coastal blue, all the way to a light sage green.  I actually have a tea towel that had a color grouping in it that I was hoping to duplicate. In the end I decided on a milky white wall and upper cabinets, and a very colonial-era greenish blue for the lower cabinets. 

Deciding on Paint Colors

Now remember, the plan was to keep this on a tight budget, so I didn’t want to use an expensive paint for this project.  I looked at Lowes and Home Depot and ended up finding a ‘mistake gallon’ at Home Depot that was very close to my milky white color.  The super lucky part was it was a semi-gloss, which I was hoping to find for the kitchen AND it only cost $10.  So, I decided to get a matching brand paint made up to the color I wanted for the lowers.  That gallon cost $29.  I bought some disposable trays, a few new rollers and brushes and ended up spending about $70 between paint and painting supplies.                  

I will say that if this was my own house, I would have completely removed the cabinet doors and hinges and sanded everything down.  However, the previous painting was done over the hinges, and I was not going to take the time or exert the energy to scrape those down.  So, I painted everything as it was.  I did sand the exterior of the cabinets because there were so many layers of sticky, old paint piled up, and I wanted to try to make the outer surface look as fresh as possible.  Prep-work is always the most time-consuming part of a painting project, so I broke the kitchen down into 3 sections.  This way, I felt like I was accomplishing something each day, and we could still use the kitchen for cooking.

Old clock gets new paint

One of the things I knew I wanted to do was update our old wall clock with a coat of black paint, as well as a keyholder that I picked up from Hobby Lobby and a few little odds and ends.  We had a can of flat black spray-paint, so I tasked my husband with spraying the items and they turned out great. 

In the end, it took me about 4 days to get the kitchen completed and I even had several hours of help and motivation from my daughter who was in town that week.  Once the tape was pulled up, the floor and counters were scrubbed, the hardware was installed and the decorations were hung up, I sat back and thought, “wow, this turned out so great!”  It feels like a breath of fresh air walking into the kitchen now and I’m so pleased with my efforts.  The kitchen definitely looks like a farmhouse style kitchen and I am really excited to be able to cook and film videos in the space now!

In total, I spent approximately $110 on this Kitchen Update, and I feel like that was very budget friendly.  If you have any questions about this project, please let me know!

The New Kitchen Look

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