Tips for renovating your kitchen on a
budget
The kitchen. It is fairly widely accepted that the kitchen
is the “hub of the home”, probably even more so in recent times. Historically, entertaining at home meant
eating canapés and starters in the formal lounge, followed by dinner being
served to the table in a formal dining room.
Guests were worlds away from the cooking and food preparation, and children
were definitely “seen and not heard”.
Generally, entertaining in the home strived to be a more formal
experience than it is today.
More than ever, people have
embraced cooking, with the rise of reality shows such as Masterchef and cook
book sales going through the roof. No longer
do people have a set of saucepans and a few essential dishes, we now have woks,
vacuum sealers, ham slicers, juicers, and of course the beloved food
processor. Therefore, kitchens today
need to have loads more storage space than ever before.
So as you can see, not only do we
use kitchens differently to how we did in the past, kitchens now have to
function differently.
In fact 100% of real estate
agents we spoke to said that a good kitchen can be the number one selling point
for a house. So ask yourself ….. what is
your kitchen like ? Is it letting the
team down big time, or does it just need a bit of a pick-me-up ?
Really, there are three types of
kitchen renovations.
Renovation No.1. The rip everything out and start again
version;
Renovation No. 2. The layout is reasonable, but everything is
incredibly dated; and Renovation No. 3. The, it’s not too bad, it just needs a freshen up.
When it comes to Kitchen Reno No.
1, you’ll need to budget somewhere between about $8,000 and $30,000, depending
on level of finish. Appliances will cost
around another $3-8,000 again, depending on what brand you choose and how many
you can re-use from your previous kitchen.
One option to give you a leg up
financially is to consider selling your old kitchen using something like ebay
or the trading post. Sometimes your
trash can be someone else’s treasure, and you may even save some money on the
demolition and removal of the old kitchen, as usually it is the purchaser’s job
to remove the kitchen themselves – although anything hard wired, connected to
mains gas or plumbed in will need to be disconnected professional first.
There are a number of kitchen
companies around who do amazing work. My
advice is, do your research, have a look on line, go and visit some show rooms,
speak to friends or family who have done kitchen renovations recently and make
a time when you are not in a rush to speak to a kitchen designer at one of the
kitchen companies you have looked at. There
are some great online resources, such as this one http://www.realestate.com.au/home-ideas/space-kitchens. Knowing what you’d like to achieve before you
spend time with a kitchen designer will definitely make the time you spend with
them more productive. A good kitchen
designer is worth their weight in gold – they know all the latest products and
trends and can help you spend money in the right places in your kitchen.
If you are in
the Kitchen Reno No. 2 bracket, there are a number of key areas that you can
work on in your kitchen that will make a huge difference to the look and feel
of the space. Firstly, cabinetry. If you are generally happy with the size and
location of your kitchen cabinets, but the doors are dated, worn or broken, you
can remove all the cupboard doors and drawer fronts and replace them with brand
new ones. Not all kitchen companies will
do this, so it is important to check, but new doors can make an old kitchen
look absolutely brand new. The same goes
with benchtops. These can be easily
replaced with newer sleeker materials – and don’t forget your splashback !
Another really popular change you could make to your kitchen, particularly if it is one that feels closed in or dark is to remove the cupboard doors from your high levels cupboards, revealing open shelving. Check out this blog piece from Apartment Therapy which talks about open shelving. http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/great-open-kitchen-shelving-th-124683 Admittedly, you’d have to be fairly neat and tidy to pull it off, but it does really work.
Another really popular change you could make to your kitchen, particularly if it is one that feels closed in or dark is to remove the cupboard doors from your high levels cupboards, revealing open shelving. Check out this blog piece from Apartment Therapy which talks about open shelving. http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/great-open-kitchen-shelving-th-124683 Admittedly, you’d have to be fairly neat and tidy to pull it off, but it does really work.
Seriously,
any one of these changes would make a big difference, let alone doing all
three. Obviously, the more changes you
make, the more money you will spend, so as with all things, it is important to
do all the research you can, including pricing before you make any key
decisions.
If you are
looking at Kitchen Reno No 3, a general freshen up, a new splashback, and / or a
lick of paint on the walls will really put the life back in your kitchen. It’s amazing how grimy and yellow a kitchen
can get, even when you are a fastidious cleaner. Another idea could be to re-spray your
kitchen cupboards. A number of companies
now make paint suitable for spraying over laminate (although I don’t believe it
is suitable for benchtops, and most enamel paints will go nicely over timber
with a polyurethane finish, so long as your preparation is according to the
directions. This usually requires some
sanding of the timber work, but can have really amazing results.
Lighting can
also make a huge difference to the look and feel of the kitchen. Dim, inappropriate lighting can really date a
kitchen, making it appear old and tired.
New task lighting can really transform a space, and new advances in LED
lighting has meant that smaller lights can now be concealed within cabinetry
more successfully than ever before.
Don’t forget
to give any appliances you are intending to keep a deep clean – even using a
toothbrush in those small cracks and hard to reach places. A good clean could bring them back to looking
brand new. It’s amazing how over a
period of time things get dirty or soiled and you don’t notice.
So, now that
you are armed with a whole lot of new strategies for giving your kitchen the new
look it deserves, it’s time to appraise your own kitchen. It’s a new year, what better time to put some
of these ideas into practice and plan a new look for your kitchen ! What are you waiting for ??