5 Ways to Renovate Your Kitchen on a budget

The kitchen is often considered the heart of the home. Whether you want to cook or simply enjoy some food at the table, having a well-designed kitchen is essential.

Kitchen remodels often involve replacing hardwood floors, removing upper cabinets and replacing them with open shelving, installing a wide range, and adding new lighting fixtures, add to that labor cost and kitchen renovation can get expensive, but if you are unwilling or unable to invest in your kitchen renovation, it doesn’t mean that your dream kitchen is not possible. In this post, I will be sharing ways to improve your kitchen without spending too much money.

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Replacing or painting your kitchen cabinets can make the biggest difference when renovating the kitchen because paint color does make a big difference.

However, many times the cabinets have to stay the way they are.  So let’s look at how you can transform your space into a functional and beautiful workspace, without spending thousands of dollars. The key is knowing where to start.

Here are five kitchen remodel ideas without spending a fortune.

Reasons to keep the kitchen cabinets

When we decided to renovate and upgrade our kitchen, the number one suggestion we heard from friends was: “paint the kitchen cabinets.” However, painting or replacing our kitchen cabinets was not in our plans.

If you are planning a kitchen renovation here are some of the reasons you might consider not painting the cabinets.

• You don’t have the skill set or time to paint the cabinets: it has become very popular to DIY paint kitchen cabinets. It looks good on pictures and looks easy when someone else does it. However, I would argue that nothing looks worse than a bad cabinet paint job. If you don’t have the time or the skills to invest in repainting the cabinets – don’t.
• You are planning to rent out the house later: – usually, the stain finish on the cabinets is pretty durable and the new paint might not be. You don’t want to have to worry about your renters scratching your kitchen cabinets.
• You don’t like the look of painted cabinets
• The cabinets are really good quality and painting them would degrade them
• Hiring someone to paint the cabinets will be expensive and it’s hard to find a professional willing to do such a job.
• The cabinets are still new and in a good condition and you like your kitchen layout.

In our case, we didn’t want to undertake such a big task of painting the cabinets ourselves, plus we were planning to rent out the house later and we didn’t want to worry about peeling paint.

So, we decided to renovate our kitchen, but keep the cabinets and the countertop.

Replace the handles

If you bought a builder-grade home, they probably have installed the cheapest, generic cabinet handles. Replacing the handles will add character to your kitchen.

We replaced our brushed nickel handles (that didn’t really go with anything in the house) with matte black.  They highlighted the black spots on the countertop and tied everything together.

I sold the original handles on OfferUp, so the total investment for all handles was about $40, plus 30 min of time to replace them and it created a beautiful visual impact.

Shop the handle:

Please note: measure the whole width of your current handles and order that size. You don’t want to be dealing with patching up old holes.

Install under-cabinet lighting

Another easy and cheap way to update your kitchen would be to install under cabinet lights. Under-cabinet light will be a game-changer. It serves as task lighting, we also keep it on and it serves as a night light for the house.

See my post: Improve Your Home Lighting (in 30 minutes and don’t break your budget) for more ideas to improve your home lighting.

We used under cabinet lights that didn’t require drilling or extensive electrical knowledge.

These lights are perfect if you don’t want to drill through the cabinet walls. The lights had a huge impact on a small investment. 

The kitchen backsplash is a game changer

Installing a tile backsplash is an easy way to tie the kitchen together. It is also easy to clean and protects the walls from stains.

For your tile color ideas, look at what you have to work with – the cabinets and countertop.

In this case, we choose a white subway tile backsplash, with a creamy undertone. That creamy undertone was pulling from the warm tones on the countertop and the cabinets and was key to tieing the whole kitchen together.

Update your kitchen ceiling lighting

Updating your kitchen ceiling lights won’t create a “wow” effect on the photos, and most people won’t notice, but it will be a key for creating a mood in your kitchen.

Look at your ceiling lights: are they outdated? are they halogen? do they give out harsh bright or yellow light? If you’ve answered “yes” to any of those questions then updating them to LED will create a huge difference for you.

We recommend these lights to replace your old halogen ones.

If you need more help with replacing the halogen lights, check out this post: Easy LED replacement kit for halogen bulb

Here are some great alternatives for the flush mount ceiling lights

Replace your island lights

When you buy a builder-grade home, the light fixtures are usually terrible. They are small and cheap-looking.

Replacing your island light fixtures will add character to your kitchen and make a huge difference.

Here are my selection of the island pendants:

If you are wondering about the placement of the kitchen island lights, see this post: “Get Your Kitchen Island Lighting Right” Resource (technical tips )

Conclusion 

Did this post get your creative juices flowing?  I hope I have inspired your to take on your kitchen renovation project and make it affordable and doable for you.  If you need help, we can help you virtually