About 1 1/2 years ago, I decided to [have Joe] repaint our kitchen over the weekend. It hadn’t been painted since we moved into our home 5 years earlier, and it desperately needed a fresh coat. I was done with the light green the contractor had painted it prior to us buying. Needless to say, that repainting turned into an unplanned budget weekend kitchen makeover. I never shared any details about this little kitchen refresh, but I get questions all the time, especially about the paint color and the open shelving. So today I’m sharing allll the details, links, resources, and some recent photos. Keep scrolling for the deets.
In case you’re interested, you can see what our kitchen used to look like. Green walls, lots of upper cabinets, an under-cabinet range hood. It looked very small and cramped.
When we set out to paint the kitchen, we knew we’d be removing our upper cabinets. It had been our plan all along, for whenever we got around to painting the kitchen. I wanted to pare down on what I had in my kitchen, and knew that getting rid of some of our cabinets would force me to do just that. I also knew that getting rid of the upper cabinets would help to open up our very small kitchen and make it feel larger. So, down came the upper cabinets on our west wall. And the range hood, since it was an under-cabinet unit. (Our little secret: we still haven’t installed a new range hood….still can’t decide on something that doesn’t dwarf our kitchen.)
Of course, one thing led to another, and this meant Joe had to repair the walls and ceiling a bit. And then we decided to get rid of our granite countertops and replace them with something else. We needed our new countertops to be affordable and something we could readily purchase, since our kitchen was already pulled apart and it was Saturday evening.
We weren’t planning on necessarily tackling all of this, but suddenly our kitchen was torn apart and we needed to finalize our plans. Which meant I had to decide what on earth to do for open shelving. So, I started scouring all my favorite kitchen photos for inspiration. I’ve pinned over 3000 Kitchen Images, but when it came down to actually figuring out what was going to work best for us, in our tiny 100-year-old farmhouse, I had to do some soul searching. I loved images with one simple shelf, and maybe a half tile backsplash, but I knew that wouldn’t work in our tiny space, where I need to maximize our storage areas.
I kept going back to these two images (one, two) that I shot in 2017 at the Food52 office in NYC. They were bright and fresh, and I liked the simple painted shelves. And the countertops were perfect…I grew up with butcher block and really love it.
For our open shelves, I eventually decided on 10″ pine boards with wooden brackets, both painted in our wall color. After almost 2 years, I’m still 100% pleased with this decision. Someone coined them “Modern Quaker” and I am loving that description. For our countertops, I decided on IKEA butcher block. We were able to take a Sunday morning trip to pick up the final pieces to our kitchen!
Obviously, we did all the work ourselves. It was easy enough after a few YouTube tutorials, and we didn’t want to spend any money on things we could do ourselves. Here’s what we spent on our budget weekend kitchen makeover:
PROJECT TOTAL: $507
This weekend project has brought our family and home life so much joy and order. It’s amazing how a few improvements can make such a difference on the mood and overall feel of a home. It’s airy and open and so much more beautiful to experience.
I’ll be sharing another post soon with some of my favorite, go-to kitchen tools and props, so keep an eye open for that!
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Beautiful
[…] KITCHEN MAKEOVER: Okay, friends, stay with me. This just looks like SO much fun. If I owned my own place, I would one thousand percent jump on this […]
Your kitchen is so beautiful and appealing. Very laid back and has a welcoming vibe.
Thanks so much, Valerie! It’s definitely very LIVED IN 😉