$80 Kitchen Remodel Reveal!

When I tell people I redid my kitchen, including now countertops, for around $80, they always look at me like I'm nuts. But it happened, and I've got to say I'm so proud of my thriftiness and creativity!

To get caught up to speed, you should probably read my post on my original PLAN for this room. I followed that up with a step by step of what I had decided to do in Let's Talk Kitchen Renovation! A lot of prices and products I used are listed in those posts.


This project was a LONG time overdue in happening, but now that's it's over I am kicking myself that I didn't do it like this when we originally did the room 5 years ago.  Remember how it looked before?? (The various was it looked before? haha!) To see how it looked in the VERY BEGINNING of our lives here, you can check out the KITCHEN EVOLUTION post.

Yeah, all that's gone now! I can't believe I lived like that for almost 5 whole years!

BUT HERE IT IS NOW!!

Let me show you around! - I would like to note that I got this project finished while I still had all my summer decor out, but now it's all fall-ish at my house, so things decor-wise may look a bit different now.

Yeah! It's so much brighter!! I love it!

I love how the table looks (it's showing up very red in this photo. It's not that red) with the new wall color, so much prettier!

I kept a lot of what I already had over my cabinets, including my big "BLESSED" that I got on sale at Hobby Lobby a few years ago.

It says "Missy's Kitchen, est. 2009" The bottle is a "Cheerwine" bottle. It's a lot like Cherry Coke but more cherry than coke. My Mom used to love it when she was in her early 20's and first married. I think she actually lived in the town where they made it, but I'm not sure. We found this at Cracker Barrel and bought a few bottles! And then the Mason Jar is filled with rocks that I picked up from out of the ocean in the Bahamas when we went in 2013.

My giant "R" was also from Hobby Lobby. I painted the bottle and the star blue with leftover front door paint! And, ya gotta have the glass "RC Cola" bottle. It's Aaron's favorite drink, ever! 

I thought it would be cute to have some photos of Aaron and I in the kitchen when we were little on display. This one is of him, ear to ear in chocolate pudding. How adorable?!

And this one is me, in my Dorothy costume, making biscuits with my Mama. I was probably 3 or 4. 

I change out this picture seasonally, but it's always a shot of me and my Dad. This one is a fun memory. He'd been fishing and pulled up in the driveway yelling for my Mom to bring me outside. He said "I caught a fish that's as big as my baby! Bring her out here and let's measure them up!" And, as you can see, the fish is as big as his baby. :)  Currently there's a shot of him and me, as Little Red Riding Hood, on Halloween in the frame by the window!

The pantry stands out so much more than it did before! It's easier for me to see what I have now!

Here's my iPad/TV set up in the kitchen! It's such a small space I wouldn't have room for a TV, unless it was teeny, so I just hook the iPad up to this iPod dock, put the iPad on an easel, and there ya have it, instant television! :) I use the heck out of this system! (I do need a less obnoxious easel though!)

 My microwave area! It's amazing to me how much easier this room is to keep clean now!! This section of the room was the first to get "finished" and for a moment I thought it was all too light, but after living with it for a few days, I had no regrets!

The stove (it's even prettier now!), and my little helper! She hung in there like a trooper with me while I was doing all of this! I did purchase the hand towel, and pot holder and oven mitt set specifically for the new kitchen and it was a $5 set from Dollar General!

I decided I was too tired to cook the day after it was all finished (I finished it around 2 or 3am, actually) so I stuck a meal in the crock pot! 

I leave this butcher block cutting board out all the time. It's arranged a bit differently now, for fall, but it's still out all the time. A very good idea, and super easy to clean up!

DIY EVERYTHING! Haha! DIY lotion, and DIY lamp! I painted both the lamp base and the shade! If I eventually find something I like better, ok, and if I don't I like this just fine! 

 MORE DIY! I did the "EAT" out of cardboard. I free-handed the letters, cut them out with an exact-o knife (it's not perfect but I didn't expect it to be), painted them blue with leftover front door paint and attached them to the wall with 3M tape! I LOVE it!  The curtains over the windows I found on sale at Dollar General for $5 a panel. I bought 3! (The one over the sink I cut in half and split up the middle!)

 My flowers and DIY table runner! My cooking utensils are actually living in the owl pitcher now, and I'm using my glass cake stand full of homemade cookies as a centerpiece! I loved that I could still use this runner! My Mom made it for me and monogrammed our last name initial onto each end. There's enough teal blue in it that it works!

 Chandelier is even more beautiful now!

The room is a small room. and we have a large table, but it all feels so much BIGGER now that it's so light!
 

I find myself WANTING to be in the kitchen now. I just LOVE how it all turned out.

Be sure to visit the posts linked above for prices on items (including my "new" countertops) and names of paint colors and such! I'm tickled pink and blue (wink wink) with this room and can't tell you how satisfying it was to completely change it for such a small price!

Thanks for catching up with me today! See y'all soon!

The Plan

Good Afternoon my few and faithful! 

Today I want to share with you my planning/thought process when I'm planning out a home "redesign" project.

The room I'm working hard on at present is the Kitchen. I recently finished - pretty much - my home office and am just waiting for a final touch or two to finally share it with you. I need a handful more of little items to be able to call it a wrap on that room. But now I'm turning my near full attention to the kitchen.

If you read my Kitchen Evolution post you will know it's been through it's ups and downs. When we first "took possession" of the house and started renovating we painted the cabinets a dark chocolate brown with a very expensive oil based paint. The cabinets are old, from the 1960's, and are a flat panel door. I don't particularly care for flat panel doors, period, but this house is full of them, so I'm living with them. We also chose to paint the walls a sage green color. A very pretty color, but as my home evolves, it's becoming the odd man out. We even went ahead and had the counter tops replaced.

I ended up going with our dark counter tops because granite was unavailable at the time, because of money, and there was nothing else in the store that I liked, even remotely. Plus is went with dark cabinets and green walls. It was the most evasive thing we did when working on this house, and I'm still glad we went ahead and did it. 

As these 5 years have worn on, my house has undergone some big changes and for the most part, the kitchen has always felt ok to me. The decor started leaning more toward the country style, with floral curtains and floral china pieces being displayed over the cabinets, and then we introduced the big new table into the room and that pushed it even further country. But as the house turned blue around it (comment below if you would like to see a tour of everything aqua in my home) the green kitchen started feeling like the loner kid on the playground. 

So, what do I do? I start by thinking about it. For the longest time, I felt the fault was with the cabinets, so I started thinking of ways to lighten up the cabinets, and had even settled on buying white contact paper and covering them, in their entirety. But one afternoon I was cruising Pinterest, like I do, and saw a photo of dark cabinets against a light beige wall. And the light bulb in my head not only came on, but it started flashing.

You're doing it wrong! Don't paint the cabinets! DON'T contact paper the cabinets! Paint the walls!

It was pretty clear the direction I needed to go after that realization, so I had to start to hatch my plan, by listing what is important to me in the project.

• It cannot cost a whole lot of money - and I must unload some of my "sellables" in order to fund such a project. Perhaps the "Bank of Husband" would work finance a loan haha!
• I'd like the walls to be a light beige color, to flow with the rest of the house and to work well with my aqua accent color. I would definitely be going with a paint color from Lowe's Allen+Roth line because it is only $30 per gallon.
• (as with the office) Paint, or DIY as many accessories as possible to save money.
• Contact paper the nearly black counter tops.

After making out the list (it's usually a mental list) of the things I want to accomplish in the room, I go to Pinterest and create an inspiration board to help me visualize how it will turn out. Check out my "Kitchen Spruce Up" board HERE. I determine, from there, the style I'm going for and what will work in my space and what won't. It always helps that I have a creative mind.

Then I add the things that "speak to me" from Pinterest onto my list. 

• New curtains (or re-purpose some I already have) for both windows. (One set will go to the floor)
• new artwork - DIY I love this giant "EAT" from sweetpickinsfurniture.com.
  
  This could be accomplished by either buying the letters from Michaels (around $2 a letter I think) or I could have my father in law, wood craftsman that he is, cut them out for me, but then I decided that cardboard would be the easiest route to go. A little cardboard, some paper mache and a little aqua paint and we are in business. Completely free because of my left over aqua paint from my Front Door Makeover!
  I also like the idea of simple kitchen art, like this Mason Jar print from printabledecor.net
  
  

  

I find I am much more satisfied, and proud, of my end results when I do things myself. 

hookedonhouses.net

 I know that I want whatever the end result to be to work well with Aqua accessories. So I find photos like the one above to help me visualize how much aqua is too much or not enough. BTW, if my kitchen was this size, I'd never leave it. Are you kidding me? I love it!  Plus, if you go into Kohl's now they are offering so many fun, bright colored kitchen products. They will probably be going on sale soon to make way for Christmas things! I can't wait for that! (I want the aqua blue little cow shaped figurine so bad!)

After I've got my Pinterest board set up, I head over to Amazon, to check out their selection to see if I want to buy, or to DIY and re-purpose. In this case, I already know I want a counter-top looking contact paper to cover my counters. Originally I thought I would go with something just for the back splash, but after I started looking, I found this.

And yes, I screen-shot this for ya'll to see. (My pink polka dot theme came from Firefox's add-ons page, in case you were wondering.) Here's a link to the Amazon Listing. As soon as I saw it, my brain shot to an image of my brown cabinets, beige-y walls and aqua goodness sitting on top. I knew it was the one. I ultimately decided it'd be safest to go with the 75ft roll for $30 to be on the safe side.

The only other thing I knew I might want to spend a little cash on was some curtains, and I've been lucky on finding inexpensive sheer curtains (my favorite style) on Amazon for about $8 for 2 panels. But what color did I want? I was afraid if I went with an aqua color I'd end up getting this insane bright neon blue color, and I didn't want that, at all. Best to stick with a neutral if you ask me. I could do with a set of "ivory" sheers for $8 per 2 panels, as I'd expected. But after thinking about it for a while, I decided against buying new curtains. I got creative again. The sheer curtains on our big living room window were just hanging there, and we already had a set of drapes hanging there, so the sheers were just adding bulk to the window coverings. And that window is huge, I mean huge. So I thought about it, and decided to re-purpose those sheers. It will save that $8, and I can put it toward the paint and/or contact paper. The windows in this house (except for the big window in the living room) aren't exactly "pretty" but my "cover it up" attitude from 5 years ago really sucks now because of the lack of any natural lighting. I'll clean the fire out of the windows and the ledges and deal with the cracks if it means I can have a light and bright room to hang out in,


A lot of this project will be the de-clutter of my over the counter shelf, using the bare bones of decor - my large dark brown "R" will stay, for sure, my "Blessed" from Hobby Lobby will stay and a few other little knick knacks will stay. I will add in a few items - I have a gold basket weave star shaped box my Dad got me years and years ago (I love stars) that I am planning on slapping a little aqua paint on. I also have a star shaped box that has the world "believe" written on it that I will probably add as well as some other things I have laying around the house. My floral china pieces I think I will tuck away in a box for now, because until I have a proper china cabinet, I just don't feel like they will 'go' with the new look. I also really like the idea of a few photos up there. I've got some cute ones of me when I was a baby "cooking" with my Mama, and then a couple of cute ones of Aaron when he was a lil' tyke... especially the one of him with his face covered, ear to ear, with chocolate pudding. Adorbs. So that's an idea too.




OK. After I decide for sure what I want to do, I go to Lowe's and look at my paint options - we are going tonight. If I am dead set, I'll go ahead and purchase it, but if not, I'll take a sample home and check it out with the surroundings to see if i like it, I would specifically check to see if it "went" with our counters. But since I am changing the counters too, I will probably just go for it and buy tonight.

The middle of September will start to be super busy for me (I'm doing another play!) and so I won't have that much time to devote to home redesign. So I want to get this project done soon, very very soon. Like, next week soon. I'd like to start it tomorrow but I don't have my contact paper (unless I miraculously find it at Lowe's tonight!), and I'm the type of person that likes 1 day transformations.  Pretty much all my redesigns are done in a single day.

So now that I've got my plan pretty much in place, I clean the room, thoroughly, and get it ready for it's makeover!


In short (too late), here's The Plan!

• paint the walls
• contact paper the counter tops
• paint accessories
• diy some art
• diy "new" curtains 
• redesign over the cabinet decor 

I'll update you all when the project is finished. I will also post photos of the office as soon as those final touches are in place!


Here I go, again!

Thanks for stopping by again today! I love you all!