Our Kitchen Reno: Scary to Airy for less than $300!

Renovations!  Some people love them, some people hate them. I personally love them!  I must say, however, that because I'm chompin' at the bit to move I'm over renovating our city home.  Don't get me wrong, it's been a good house, but I've been ready to move on for a LONG time.  Unfortunately, when you get to that point, your tendency to start new projects somewhat diminishes and ugly mint green kitchens tend to stay ugly and mint-y for much longer than is excusable!  This, my friends, is the reason why a person who spends a HUGE amount of time in their kitchen is just now finally getting around to doing something about this terrible eyesore!  Good news is, I'm usually pretty good on doing this on the cheap ( and still looking decent, if I do say so myself!).

When we moved into our city home almost 8 years ago, the galley kitchen looked something like this.  Green, dated, with strange, useless, hunky handles everywhere, green-grainy counter tops, nasty linoleum floors, a strange wall that wasn't originally there and to top it all off, it had a small apartment sized stove hardwired into the middle of the kitchen and a range hood vented into the attic.  That's right folks, picture a 1 inch hole drilled through the floor with a stove wire run through it and to the panel and a vent dumping moist air into your attic. Utter loveliness!

About a month after we moved in, and with the arrival of new appliances, we removed the strange wall and moved the new stove over to the 'real' wall, complete with a new proper 240V stove outlet.  (Yay for safe electrical!) With the removal of the wall, we did a quick crack fill job on the ceiling and some peel and stick tile on the floor, with the intention of doing a proper job within the next year.  And there is sat, folks.  In all of its ugliness.  Until now.

To get the house ready to sell we realized that this ugly green monster had to go!  With my husbands handy skills, and my vision ( and mad painting skills) we did a quick yet effective renovation.  We painted the cabinets, removed the ugly header board to expose more storage, added some crown molding,  new hardware, new vinyl flooring and a counter top paint job.  We also jazzed up the end wall with some beautiful 100 year old barn board shelves ( not included in the reno price) which really add to the feeling of the kitchen.  I realllllly hope to take them with us to the homestead!  I'm going to do a separate post about the shelves and a more detailed post with instructions and pictures on my counter top reno, which saved us big money ( about $40 vs hundreds to replace!). We went with a grey colour scheme to update the space, while keeping it airy and neutral.

After our under $300 reno!
Not staged, just grabbed a picture to show.

While it's always fun to drop a few thousand or ten on a whole new kitchen, sometimes its just not in the budget.  Rest assured, you too can totally change the feeling and update your tired, scary kitchen as long as you also invest a little patience, creativity, time and elbow grease.

One step closer to the homestead, y'all!