Update Your Kitchen for Under $100
Against the Wall
One of the most basic ways to freshen up your kitchen is to give the walls a coat of paint. Kitchen walls take a beating. Cooking creates grease and smoke, and over time your walls will take on a dingy appearance. Covering your walls with paint will produce a clean, fresh look that should last for years. Depending on the size of your kitchen, a gallon or two will do the trick. Choose a semi-gloss rather than a flat wall paint. Semi-gloss creates a slicker surface, and food splatters and fingerprints will be easier to clean up. After you’ve painted, consider applying a wallpaper border. Borders are very easy to put up. You’ll almost always find directions printed in or on the packaging, but it’s basically a matter of determining how much you need, soaking the strip in a sinkful of water, and then smoothing it onto the wall surface. The choice of patterns is nearly endless. If you shop around, you can often find discontinued patterns that are greatly reduced in price.
Elect to Change the Cabinet
In most kitchens, cabinetry takes up a good portion of the room. If your cabinets have seen better days, paint them, too. Although a rich, dark wood stain on new, perfect cabinets often looks dramatic, using a dark paint to cover up old cabinets will probably be overpowering in most kitchens. You’ll be better off choosing a light color. A white gloss paint will open up the room and make it look airy and clean.
For contrast, consider painting the doors and drawers white but use a darker color on the cabinet frames. If your budget allows, change the handles and drawer pulls. Be aware, though, that while this update sounds cheap, it can add up quickly. Count up all the handles – you’ll probably be surprised at how many there are – and then price the hardware. Depending on the style, handles and pulls can range from under a dollar to several dollars each.
Working the Counter
Stock countertops from home-improvement stores are relatively inexpensive. If you shop around, you can often find a 12-foot section for under $100. However, finding it and installing it are two different stories. If you have a way to get the countertop home and are able to measure, cut (including the hole for sink) and install it, this is the way to go. If not, try this alternative: Cover up your old, ugly countertop with a granite-look spray paint. Begin by covering everything in the room and taping the edges where the countertop meets the wall and cabinets. Spray paint is messy. The overspray will fill the air and settle on your walls, floors and cabinets. Make sure your countertop is clean and dry, then spray with a solid color of regular spray paint in a color that is similar to the granite-type spray paint you have chosen. (Plain spray paint is much cheaper than the granite-type and will provide the base coat.) Then spray on the granite-type spray paint. It will produce a splattered look that helps cover up imperfections. When the paint is thoroughly dry, brush on several coats of a clear acrylic sealer. This fix-up method looks great, but it’s not as durable as a manufactured countertop. Don’t let puddles of water accumulate, and always use a cutting board.
Under Foot
If you want to “floor” your friends and family with your budget-conscious remodeling know-how, look into peel-and-press vinyl floor tiles. They are lightweight, easy to handle and cheap. You can often find tiles on sale or of a discontinued pattern for about 50 cents each. Of course, some are much more, so you’ll need to shop around. The tiles typically are 12 inches by 12 inches. Measure your kitchen and multiply the length by the width. This will give you the square footage and, because the tiles are one-foot square, also will tell you how many tiles you need. If your kitchen is 10 feet by 12 feet, your kitchen is 120 square feet and you need 120 tiles. Buy some extra tiles to allow for mistakes and odd-shaped areas. Vinyl tiles can rip if appliances are pushed across them, so it’s a good ideas to have a few extra on hand for repairs down the road, too. If your current floor is pretty smooth, you can stick them right on top of whatever floor covering you have now. Be aware that lumps and bumps will show through, so try to make your surface as smooth as possible. Start in one corner of the room, make sure your first tile is straight, and simply work your way in rows across the room.
Extra, Extra
If you have a few dollars left over when you are done with any of the above bigger projects, add a few finishing touches. Put new curtains on your kitchen windows and spruce up your table with a bright tablecloth, runner or placemats. A vase of fresh flowers on the table always provides a pretty focal point.
Granted, none of these improvements are going to cause a home-improvement magazine editor to schedule a photo shoot in your kitchen. However, they will provide a fresh, new look that won’t break the bank.
