Kitchen Renovation on the Cheap

~ Laura

Our kitchen dates back to the early 1980’s and has all the style of a J. Crew Barn Jacket. It’s boxy and brown, and we’re stuck with it for quite a while. The cabinets are actually very good quality – solid wood and smooth action, but I dream about a better layout and some relief from all that brown. I took down the balloon wallpaper last year. That helped.

Today I changed out the cabinet hardware. I really, really wanted these cabinet knobs, but ended  up with these ones. There are 51 knobs in the room, so we saved $500.

Here’s the before…

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And here’s the after…

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Published by Laura

16 thoughts on “Kitchen Renovation on the Cheap”

  2. I like the switch. It’s subtle but it’s a nicely subtle change.

    I’m envious, though – at least your cabinets have knobs. Our cabinets doors are those awful textured late-80s atrocities. We’re convinced that the cabinets in the kitchens and bathrooms were what made it possible for us to buy this house well below comparables in the neighbourhood. That and the screaming apricot paint that filled the foyer and hallways.

    Once Eldest is finished her undergraduate degree, we’re saving up for a kitchen reno. So looking forward to that day. . . .

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    1. “We’re convinced that the cabinets in the kitchens and bathrooms were what made it possible for us to buy this house well below comparables in the neighbourhood. That and the screaming apricot paint that filled the foyer and hallways.”

      Something similar happened with our new house. The other people who viewed it ran screaming away from the dirty pink carpet, purple swirl faux marble and pink Formica.

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  3. New nobs are much better. I should buckle down and swap ours. I can never justify buying anything at rejuvenation. I think I’d have to believe my house was a work of art first.

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  4. Oh, much better. I like these better than the swanky expensive ones, actually.

    Just the other day I was counting the knobs in my own kitchen (I have 22) and doing the calculation about new ones. I’m renovating a bathroom and now every other room in the house looks worse to me.

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    1. “I’m renovating a bathroom and now every other room in the house looks worse to me.”

      So true.

      There’s an old short story about that that I can’t recall at the moment. It’s about a guy who changes one thing in his home and then has to change everything.

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  6. we have a similar kitchen, rather grim tile countertops and all, except our cabinet knobs are tarnished dim brass. After pricing new ones we decided the tarnish was really a valuable patina, and we could live with it.. ha.
    One bathroom is done and quite pretty now, boy’s bathroom is horrid 80’s brown linoleum so that is next. Kitchen is last, we may move out before we get to it.. hm.

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  7. Dotkaye said:

    “After pricing new ones we decided the tarnish was really a valuable patina, and we could live with it.. ha.”

    Ha!

    I find it very funny how everybody is killing themselves to make old stuff look new and to make new stuff look old. Also, when the magazine designers say, “Pulls are jewelry for your kitchen!” what that really means in designerese is “Prepare to shell out, sucker!”

    I’m a bit of a sucker for sparkly glass door knobs, although I’m not sure I’d want them for kitchen cabinets.

    http://www.houzz.com/glass-door-knobs

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    1. I like sparkly glass too! But I suspect they wouldn’t work for a kitchen. A girl’s bathroom? And on a girl’s dresser?

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      2. Indeed there are. It’s the magic of LED lighting. I think the cool thing would be to get some led lights and make your own locker chandelier with magnets, led lights, and lots of sparkle.

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  8. For Laura’s cabinets, the obvious move is to go white, but it might be easier to live with if they were painted a fairly light color. I’ve seen a lot of sage green lately, which might be red-head friendly. Blue grey lower cabinets and white upper cabinets is another option.

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      1. Another option is to paint the bottom ones black and the top ones white. (I’m not sure what you do with Laura’s countertops and backsplash.) Here are some examples–it can be fairly subtle.

        http://www.houzz.com/black-bottom-cabinets-white-top-cabinets

        http://sweetsomethingdesign.blogspot.com/2011/01/kitchen-facelift-reveal.html

        Here are some interesting examples with white upper cabinets and colored lower cabinets.

        http://thedecorologist.com/trending-dark-lower-kitchen-cabinets

        The white really freshens up the colors and keeps them from being overwhelming or annoying.

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