$5000 Kitchen Renovation

Ever wondered how to renovate a kitchen on a small budget? Hopefully this post will show you how. This is how our $5000 kitchen renovation turned out:

By way of background, we've lived in our house for almost 14 years since it was built and always made a point of keeping it updated. If you've done any sort of home renovations, you know a kitchen renovation can be costly and we weren't looking to spend a lot of money gutting the kitchen. With that said, you also know that a kitchen renovation can dramatically increase the value of your house if done well. Here's what it looked like pre-rennovation:

As you've probably noticed, the cabinets were in good shape and over the years we have upgraded our appliances from black to stainless steel. With that said, we wanted to brighten the kitchen up and get rid of the outdated browns. It was also really important that we could do this renovation with minimal disruption to the household; after all we still needed to eat! While the cabinet cases were in good shape, the doors and drawers had taken a bit of a beating from some water damage and general wear and tear:

Given the cabinet casings were in good shape and we were happy with the overall layout of the kitchen, it made sense to explore options to refinish the existing cabinetry. There are lots of companies out there that will take your doors away and refinish them and then refinish your cabinet casings on site, however these are still costly options. We also looked into refinishing options ourselves, including the Rust-Oleum Cabinet Transformation kits and tried a box as a test:

Now I have to say, we were pleasantly surprised with the results. The kit includes a primer, stain (which can be coloured) and a finish coat. Originally we thought we would go for a modern antique white finish and update the cabinet hardware, but we weren't really sold on the look and so I started researching different paint finishes.

I have to admit we were nervous about painting kitchen cabinets, but thanks to YouTube, there were lots of videos showing some great results by painting the cabinetry. We ended up deciding to try Melamine paint by CIL which is designed specifically for cabinetry and furniture refinishing. My best advice here is "it's all in the preparation". We also took the time to put together a bit of a design and storyboard so we could collect together our ideas and reach consensus. I think this is where my degree in design came in handy. As we changed ideas, we updated the story board to reflect our materials, colours and finishes.

I removed all the cabinet doors, numbered them and used the cleaning and deglosser that we had left over from our Rust-oleum kit. This ensures any grease, oil etc. is removed. You just use it with a scouring pad and I also found a used toothbrush worked well to get into the paneling on the doors. Before painting, you give them a clean with a bit of soap, water and a cloth. You don't have to sand the cabinetry or doors, but some of the doors needed a little repair using some wood filler. I also decided to do the doors in batches so that there was minimal disruption to the kitchen. This allowed me to get each batch completely finished and then allow to dry and cure for several weeks before re-installing.

I know it doesn't look pretty, but given the cabinets were a darker wood it required 3 coats of a very good latex primer to ensure the surfaces were properly prepared for the Melamine paint. Now remember, that's 3 coats per side and so you just have to be patient and do a little bit each day to keep production flowing. The Melamine paint was put on using a foam roller and good quality paint brush. This gives the cabinets a smooth and consistent finish without brush marks.

As production continued, I stored the finished doors down in our basement to properly cure and then reinstalled the cabinet hinges and new hardware. It's really important not to rush this part. 3 coats of primer on both sides and 3 coats of Melamine on both sides have held up really well over a year later. In fact, if I get a scuff or scratch, it's really easy to touch up these surfaces, but overall we're really happy with how well the finish has held up.

For the cabinet casings we were lucky that the inside of the cabinets were already white and so it was just the exterior panels and trim that needed refinishing. We also wanted to install crown moulding and under cabinet lighting and so I was able to install this and then just paint and prime at the same time we finished the cabinet casings.

For the kitchen island we decided to go with a different colour to the main cabinetry and used the same process, but a different colour:

A few years ago, my wife picked up this slab of Granite from Craigslist. We got it for $100 as it was being taken out of a multi-million dollar home in Vancouver that was being renovated. We decided to keep it and pulled many of the colours as inspiration for our colour scheme in the kitchen. Probably the hardest part of the renovation was replacing the tile backsplash. Removing the tile was messy and because the tile was well adhered to the drywall, removing the tile also mean removing the drywall. I carefully cut around the cabinetry to avoid removing the cabinets. Although this was a pain to do, it exposed the walls and allowed me to wire in the electrical for under cabinet lighting.

Once the under cabinet lighting was in, I repaired the vapour barrier and reinstalled some new drywall. This was all done in advance of the new countertop installation.

The most expensive part of the renovation by far was the counter tops. As I mentioned earlier, we decided to keep the granite on the island, but wanted to go with a solid colour and finish for the remaining countertops. We landed on a Silestone engineered quartz countertop from Home Depot who were fortunately offering 0% financing. The countertops were the most expensive part of the renovation coming in at just over $3000 installed. This included the 2cm thick countertop, 4cm double radius soft edge and a polish sink cutout including installation of an under mounted kitchen sink (we got a steal of a deal on that on sale at Home Depot for $75!!). We did not pay to have Home Depot remove and dispose of the old countertops. The installer that came round to measure up was very thorough and we were very happy with the end product:

After the countertops were installed, I could begin the task of tiling the backsplash. Again, Home Depot came to the rescue with a mosaic pattern of greys that were also on sale. I've done quite a bit of tiling and I have to say I hate it. This tile was particularly difficult to install because many of the pieces were made of glass and therefore you had to be very careful cutting with a wet saw. It's just a messy, time-consuming job. I decided to rent a wet saw from Home Depot and because the tiles came attached to a fibreglass matt it did keep cutting to a minimum. Once the tiling was installed I grouted using a plain white grout; this really made the tile "pop" and worked well with the white of the kitchen cabinets. Lastly, because this is the kitchen, I used a sealer to seal the grout which was painted on using a small paint brush.

We added some new pendant lighting which we got on sale from Rona, an awesome retro "Kitchen" sign from Urban Barn, some turquoise vases to add some colour, new barstools (used from Craigslist) and lighted "EAT" sign which my kids proceeded to ask why we had a "FAT" sign in the kitchen (because it so high up and on an angle the "EAT" appears like "FAT"). In total the project took several months over the winter and into the spring which consisted of many evenings painting cabinets and lots of weekends (in between swim meets) tiling, drywalling, woodworking and of course more painting (Oh, and that's a whole other story). Our house consists of a very open floor plan and so this small kitchen project turned into me also having to repaint the entire main floor, stairwell and upstairs hallway. No sooner than the last coat of paint dried, I heard the words "for our next project, we should re-do the fireplace wall" - a separate blog to follow on that "little" project.

Just as this project came to a close and I could finally relax, my wife stumbled across some kitchen artwork online that she thought would add the finishing touch to this project. I was told (since I'm apparently so talented) that these would be "quick and easy to make" and so I begrudgingly went to Rona, bought some finished pine, made some stencils and cut out these shapes with a jigsaw. I sanded and stained the wood with some leftover stain and attached them to the wall. I have to admit, they do add the finishing touch to the kitchen and many of our friends have asked if I would be interested in making them some.

#kitchen #homeimprovement #rennovations #diy #interiordesign #budget