Kitchen Makeover on a Real Person Budget

Hello friends! Today I bring you very exciting news! I will be participating in the Fall 2017 One Room Challenge as a guest participant, which starts right now! For those of you who are not familiar with the One Room Challenge or ORC, it is a bi-annual event hosted by Linda at Calling it Home where bloggers are challenged to make over a room in six weeks and provide weekly updates. I have been watching in awe for years as others race to the finish line and now I get to participate myself 🙂 I am SO EXCITED! And slightly terrified.

I am sure you are wondering, what room I will be making over. If you have been reading the blog for a while, you probably know there are very few unfinished spaces in our house. What you don’t know is my mom lives about a mile away and her house still has lots of opportunities for improvement. And she has been begging me to come do some work over there. So you guessed it, we are heading to her house to give her a kitchen makeover! We are going to update the space and make it not only more beautiful, but more functional. And we are going to do it for less than $1500! Yep. We are budget friendly. Kitchens can cost a fortune to renovate, so we are going to work with what we have and update it without breaking the bank!

At first glance you may think this isn’t that bad. Which I half agree with. It is a good sized space and it already has granite countertops. BUT it is lacking in a few areas. First, has anyone noticed the giant elephant that is missing from the room? Hello, this kitchen needs an island. There is massive space not being used in the middle of the room. And while the kitchen is a good size the available counterspace is a little awkward. Enter item # 1. Build an island.

Secondly, lets talk about these granite countertops. Yay to having granite! But this is a very warm toned granite and those cabinets are pretty white my friends. In person they just feel slightly wrong. So we are going to re-paint all of the cabinets with a warmer color to compliment the granite better, not to mention they could seriously use a fresh coat of paint. 

Third. Wall color. The current wall color is a funky shade of beige. Kind of pinkish beige. Not my first choice. Or third. Or tenth. Therefore, we will also be painting the walls a color that works with the warm tones of the granite.

Fourth. Did you notice that big square on the ceiling? That is actually a skylight tunnel that has been covered with cheap, decorative wood and plexiglass to hide even cheaper florescent lights, that in my opinion should pretty much never be used, ever. YUCK! Seriously, this is probably the biggest thing I hate about this kitchen aside from the fact that there is no island. This has got to be addressed! Not only to make it more ascetically pleasing but to allow that skylight to do what it was meant to do. Let light in. 

Finally, we will update the dutch door. When my mom first bought this house she didn’t really like the dutch door because she thought it was too “country”. Now she loves it! Minus the heart/cat handle. We are dog people. Haha!

So that’s the plan folks! Join me again next Thursday to see how it’s all coming 🙂 Did I mention this is only six weeks long?! Wish me luck.

And don’t forget to stop by Calling It Home to check out all of the other guest participants. There are some VERY talented bloggers joining in the fun!

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