As we come to the end of 2018, I’m so happy to look back at what we’ve done on the house this year. Ok, we’re not the fastest renovators in the world but it works for us. Cue 2019 though and it all looks a little different. On the plus side, I’ll have more time to project manage, source materials and take on some work myself. On the down side, we’ll have just one full-time salary as I spend a couple of months finding my freelancer feet.
So instead of our ground floor extension (which won’t be happening in 2019!) it may be time to give out little neglected kitchen a bit of a mini makeover. It’s not a part of our home that I like so it very rarely puts in appearance either here on the blog or Instagram. But I’ve seen so many budget-friendly makeovers online that can be really effective without replacing the entire space
Upgrading Work Surfaces
Our inherited work surfaces are almost rotting away in places, especially around the sink. When the time comes for the dream kitchen, I’ll be heading straight to The Marble Store because you know, if they’re good enough for the Dorchester Hotel then they’re definitely good enough for me 😉 They have such a vast range of options, including Silestone worktops which offer a huge variety of colours, are extremely resilient and give a high-end finish. Silestone prices also mean that you can find a solution for the budget you have to work with.
Over at The Twinkle Diaries, Caro was planning a full-scale kitchen renovation until her twin baby boys arrived on the scene and so her and her husband recently completed a mini-makeover of their own. They replaced work tops, tiles and their kitchen floor as well as giving it a lick of paint and it’s made such a difference.
Painting Cupboards
Again, our farmhouse style cupboards (aside from being ridiculously small and practically useless) are really very dated. Yes, cream is quite inoffensive but it also looks old-fashioned.
As part of their kitchen makeover, Jen who writes over at Love Chic Living ended up having to finish the cupboard paint job after their original decorator left without completing the work. It was a tedious process but she saved about £1,000 by doing the work herself and is a good reminder that it can be very difficult to find reliable tradespeople.
Floor Refresh and Change of Colour
There were two things that we did change in our kitchen, more or less as soon as we moved in. It’s quite typical of 1930s houses to have a very small kitchen compared to the living and dining rooms. It definitely didn’t help though that the walls were painted a deep crimson colour and the flooring was dark brown vinyl tiles.
Within a couple of months of moving in I gave the walls a refresh with white paint to make the tiny space brighter and appear larger, and we did get a new vinyl floor put down. Again, it’s not the dream floor but we hope that one day this will be our utility room and will all be changed anyway so it was only a temporary measure. I’m not sure we could have lasted too long without completing those fairly inexpensive changes, it was such a depressing space.
For When The Time Comes
When we are finally (eventually? EVER?) ready for the brand new kitchen, I love that there are so many tools available to help with planning and decision-making. Gone is the need to pay over the odds for a designer when online planning applications can do a great job of showing you how to make the most of the space you have whilst not compromising on the end result.
Marlene who writes at My Mindful Home used the online planning tool in conjunction with IKEA to help design her dream kitchen transformation (and what a before and after it is!) She was so impressed with the service that they then followed up and had the Swedish home behemoths install it too, getting exactly what she wanted but without the same cost as some of the high-end kitchen design studios.
I’ve got plenty of ideas now to keep me going through 2019, the question is where to start first? I’m excited to see what things look like this time next year, fingers crossed the only way is up.
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