Tag: kitchen

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A Budget Friendly Kitchen Makover for Under $250

When you walk into our house, after walking through our small entryway, you enter the large open concept floor plan that is our downstairs living space and find yourself smack dab in the middle of our very open kitchen. Despite the fact that I’m no chef nor do I aspire to be one, our kitchen is quite literally the heart of our home- not because we are foodies, but because our house seems to expand out from the kitchen that is situated in the center. From the kitchen, you can see every room in the house that isn’t a bedroom or a bathroom- although with doors open you can see a couple bedrooms and bathrooms from the kitchen too. Conversely, this means that every room in the house can see the kitchen as well. We learned quickly with this super open concept that there are also cons to having such an open living space including the fact that you can see our dirty dishes from just about anywhere. There’s no hiding them. Also, when we moved in, our kitchen was so outdated and drab, it really brought the rest of the house down with it. I’m always so bad about taking good “before” photos, but here’s the beginning of our kitchen makeover (featuring my lovely husband and our then 20-month-old toddler):


This is a shot of what our kitchen looked like “before”. Although, this shot was after we had taken off a few of the original metal handles and we did paint the top wall (above the cabinets) white. It was previously painted a dark grey color which you can see in the shot below. Knowing that we planned to go with black cabinets, we decided that we needed lots of white to contrast the dark cabinets.


I’ll preface the rest of this kitchen reveal by saying that we did start this process out considering the option of replacing and redoing our entire kitchen. Although we like the layout for the most part, our cabinets were not only outdated on the outside (covered with some fake wood-finish Formica or plastic material) but they are pretty old on the inside too. There’s a good amount of lime green and pink flowery wallpaper lining our cabinets and drawers that looks like something you might find in a hippy bus from the 70’s (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it’s also pretty worn and dirty in a way that can’t be cleaned or removed easily.

Friends, meet the retro inside of our silverware drawer:


The drawers are also just narrow enough to be too narrow to hold any sort of drawer organizers. So all of our utensils jingle around like the disorganized mess of silver that they are and we have to keep the sharp knives in their own spot so no one looses a finger digging around for their soup spoon.

After getting a couple quotes for an entirely new kitchen in price ranges upwards of $35,000, we decided not to spend the next 3-4 years trying to pay for a kitchen. So we set out to find some ways to update our kitchen in a budget-friendly, DIY fashion.

I knew I wanted black cabinets. I love white cabinets also and we toyed with the idea of going white, mainly because it seemed like a nice safe bet, but I convinced JP that we should go dark and if we wanted to change we could always paint over the cabinets later. We found this Valspar cabinet paint from Lowe’s Home Improvement.


We picked Valspar’s Dark Kettle Black color with a semi-gloss finish. And we needed just a little over 2 gallons to paint ALL of our cabinets. This pint (pictured above) was the last bit that I needed to finish the final coat on a couple of the drawers and its still got about 2/3 of the paint left in it for touch-ups later.

We bought these drawer and cabinet pulls from All Modern in a stainless steel finish.

We  scrubbed down the kitchen cabinets and prepped the cabinets for paint. I took all of the cabinet doors off and cut in the edges and corners by hand with a paint brush. Then I used a roller to roll the paint on everywhere else.


Our drawers were a little tricky because the drawers that we have don’t come out all of the way (or if they do, we couldn’t figure out how to get them out all the way) so I just carefully painted around them when they were open, then let the paint dry completely before closing them.


Once the cabinet bases were painted and dried (left to sit overnight), I screwed the doors back on and painted them while they were attached to the bases. Note: this isn’t my first time painting kitchen cabinets. I have painted 2 other kitchens prior to this and previously I laid the doors on a giant tarp to be painted which is actually more difficult and more trouble in our case than just screwing the cabinets on and painting them while they’re attached. When you paint doors that are laying on a tarp, you either need a very large garage or outdoor covered space or a large indoor space that will not be disturbed by pets or babies. Since we don’t have either of those, I decided the safest bet would be to keep the cabinets attached while we painted them and just attempt to keep everyone out of the kitchen for a day while they dried. Also it was quicker to paint them this way because I was able to paint both sides of the cabinet and leave them open to dry as opposed to painting one side at a time while they lie on a tarp.


We decided to get rid of the cabinet and vent hood above our range to help with the sight lines and making the space seem more open. We learned through this process that our vent hood wasn’t even vented out and instead was actually just a glorified fan which would blow the smoke around inside but not actually suck any smoke out of the room.


And we love the way it looks without a cabinet there. We have yet to refinish the part of the ceiling that the cabinet and vent hood were attached to, but it’s on our list of to-do’s.

The total cost of our entire kitchen makeover breaks down like this:

Drawer/Cabinet Pulls (40 count at $2.60 a piece): $104
Cabinet Paint (2 gallons and 1 pint): $116
Removal of upper cabinet and vent hood (DIY with the help of my dad): $0
Total cost: $220

And the finished product:

We finished this kitchen makeover in early September of 2016. These “after” pictures were taken today (May 17th, 2017), a little over 8 months later and we are so happy with how our painted cabinets turned out and how well they have held up. We’ve noticed very little wear and they are extremely easy to clean. The only spot that we have seen wear is the spot right behind our trash and recycling bins. Because of the constant scraping when we open and close the bins, the paint is wearing off a bit. It’s barely noticeable when the bins are pushed flush up against the cabinet, but when you pull them out, you can see the original cabinet finish underneath.


Overall, we think it may be the best $220 we’ve ever spent.

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How to Choose a Style and Color Scheme for your Home

When it comes to home decorating, most people have a style that they gravitate towards and most people decorate individual rooms with similar color schemes, but should you have a house-wide color scheme and style?

Maybe you should.

While there may be some legitimate reasons to have a room with a different color scheme or style (for example: kids rooms and nurseries or specialty rooms like a theater room or kid’s play room may have some different style/color needs that exclude them from following your house-wide color scheme), for the most part you should stick to a cohesive look. Having significant variations in decor/color/finishes can make your home seem choppy and feel smaller than it really is. Especially with the open-floor plan trending high on most priority lists, a house-wide color scheme and style is even more noticeable and needed.

When you’re looking into buying your decor/textiles/paint colors or considering bigger more permanent renovation projects like changing the floors, cabinets, light fixtures or other major renovations, having a color scheme and style in mind is key to making sure that the decisions you make for your home now will be good decisions for future buyers as well as your future self.

Coming up with an idea board and color scheme for your home is a great place to start.

First, consider your house. Does your house have a style already? Maybe you’ve settled into a 1920’s Victorian. Your mid-century modern pieces probably won’t be welcome there. Victorian houses typically look best with darker wood tones and rich colors like maroon, navy, and maybe some green with off-white accents. The fixtures usually have an antique style with black iron or brassy finishes. They are usually chock full of character and intricate woodworking details. Vintage rugs always pair nice with this style- although I may be a bit biased because I’m convinced that vintage rugs will go with any style.

Some houses may not have a distinct style in which case they are more of a shell to infuse with your own style. The good thing about those houses is you’ve got a clean slate to work with. The bad news (sometimes) is that the more generic houses that are flexible enough to work with any style usually lack the unique character that most people love, but you can always add character pieces in! Other houses may have a subtle style that can be changed by changing colors, finishes or fixtures.

Whether you’re looking to flip or just lovingly inhabit, you’ve got to have a style in mind. Once you’ve determined your style, start pulling together some ideas for an idea board. This is a great time to incorporate Pinterest. You can search on your specific style and/or colors that you’d like to incorporate and get a feel for the vibe you want in your own home. Here’s an idea board example of a modern beachy style perfect for houses near the coast- or landlocked ocean lovers. Someone with this idea board would be looking for most all neutrals (tans, grays, beige, greige – yes! that’s a thing). They would accent with lighter wood tones or vintage or weathered wood pieces, anything white (or white-washed), woven textiles, linen fabrics, and lighter blue tones or anything that pairs well with those. You could accent with a little bit of navy or coral or even bright red if you wanted a more bold look- but not all three.

Consider the more permanent/semi-permanent features of your home. Do your floors and cabinets go with the theme you’ve picked? If not, consider if you plan to change those or if you may need to change some of your ideas around to fit with your current fixtures.

Here’s a mid-century themed board. Mid-century houses are usually accented with medium wood tones, gold or brass fixtures, tapered legs and always the starburst lighting. This is usually a style relegated to houses built in the “mid-century”- think 1940’s to 1970’s occasionally the 1980’s and while this is a pretty distinct style, you can usually infuse this style into a more generic home with mid-century decor and maybe a few added character touch-ups. Commonly used mid-century colors include mustard yellow, dark orange and olive among others. A common trend these days is the mid-century modern style which combines the mid-century board (below) with more modern elements.

Once you’ve got your idea board, pull out some specific things to help define a template for your home theme. What type of wood tones will you have? What temperature will your neutrals be? For example, do you like the warmer tans, beige and cream colored or off-white neutrals like the farmhouse idea board below?

Or would you prefer cooler toned neutrals like pure white and shades of gray? Make a list of your top neutral colors as well as the accent colors or brighter colors you plan to have in your home (if you’re planning for any). And then use your idea board as a guide when you’re picking out new decor or paint colors. This bright bohemian board is almost enough to convert my style. I just love the fun and bright eclectic patterns mixed with the crocheted hammocks and Pom Pom decor. And of course bohemian style isn’t complete without house plants.

For our house theme, we’ve got a industrial modern meets mid-century modern vibe going on and I’m gravitating towards black and white and cool grey neutrals. We’ve got a giant camel colored leather sectional from Restoration Hardware that lives in our family room which is really the heart of our house so the camel color is part of our home decor board. In addition to our cool neutrals, we’ve accented with navy and an occasional pop of yellow- because yellow is just the best color ever! We have a mix of finishes from black industrial-style metal finishes to stainless steel finishes in our kitchen and then a handful of the more mid-century gold accents as well. We’ve installed some light hickory hardwood floors with lots of variation from light to medium tones and we plan to install more downstairs eventually. We also want to add in some polished grey concrete floors in our family room and some fun cement tile accents- probably black and white. So I use this idea board as a base for our home decor purchases and any new finishes. That doesn’t mean we don’t ever go outside of the box. For example, my daughter’s bedroom is a fun cotton-candy pink with grey and white accents. And since our sports/theater room houses our old dark brown and tan sofa and chairs, that room has more warm tones to coordinate with the furniture. Also, the sports room has actual football field turf on the floor which isn’t really part of our idea board, but it makes for a fun (and super cheap) floor covering for the (mostly) football-themed room. Remember when I mentioned those exceptions above? There will always be some. But for the most part, our open-spaced living downstairs, follows the rules for our intended style and color scheme.

Here’s our home idea board complete with pictures of our actual home and decor as well as a few “dream” items.


You’d be surprised at how much an idea board like this helps when you’re browsing the throw pillows at Target and trying to decide if they will go well with your decor or not.

How do you keep a cohesive look in your home?

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Our First House (Flip)

In honor of our recent closing day anniversary, I thought it would be fitting to share the before and after photos from our first ever house which later became our first house flip! Technically speaking, I guess we bought and flipped our second house, then bought our 3rd house and flipped our first house. It was a crazy 3 years! More on our Phillips Flips (home flipping stories) here.

On March 21, 2013 we bought our very first house. It was dreamy… and I mean “dreamy” in the sense that you had to dream about what it would look like one day and not what it looked like right when we bought it.

Here’s what it looked like when we bought it:

And the inside:

Check out those floors! The floors on the right of the picture above are linoleum tiles. There was 2 full layers of ceramic tile where you see the tile up there at the top and the carpet to the left was dark green. And about 8 feet inside the front door was a nice little 3-way junction where all 3 of the mixed floors met up for no real reason.

All the bedrooms had that same dark green carpet.

The kitchen was pretty small and awkwardly closed off to the rest of the house. So the first thing we did was grab a sledge-hammer and bust through some walls:

We removed the wall shown above which opened the kitchen to the entryway and a little more to the dining room over to the left.

We removed the upper cabinets that were hanging above the island which opened the headroom up a bit and made the kitchen completely open to the family/TV room.

We ripped up all of the floors to make way for light-colored hardwoods.

And then we got to work! We painted the kitchen cabinets white!

It was much more open with the overhead cabinets out of the way.

We painted the front door this fun minty color and I DIY Frosted the front windows with a little hand cut monogram in the center.

I replaced the fan in the dining room with this Maskros Pendant Lamp from IKEA and we painted the fun accent stripe wall on the side wall over there. That was SO “in” back in 2013!

We gave all the other walls a fresh coat of paint (either white or light gray).

And replaced the dark green carpet with a neutral “greige” color that we found on crazy sale at one of our local carpet/flooring warehouse places. We found just enough carpet to put in our sunken den area and all 3 of our bedrooms. It was meant to be!

I didn’t get a ton of great shots of it, but originally we had vaulted ceilings that were covered in dark wood paneling. We painted over that with white paint and it looked kind of like vaulted shiplap covered ceilings!

With the wall knocked out, the upper cabinets gone and the white paint, the kitchen looked much more open and bright!

And finally, we got around to painting the outside of the house and redoing the roof with light metal panels.

On our first ever house flip, we spent about $10K in renovations:
Flooring: $4,000 (purchased whole sale and installed by a friend of a friend)
New roof: $5,000 (we pulled our own permits and had a friend do the work for us)
Paint: $1,000 (we used a lot of leftover paint that we had sitting around in storage and we may have used plain old white primer on some interior walls- you got to save wherever you can!)

We ended up selling this house for $16K more than we paid for it which was a $6K profit on the sale alone. We also rented it out for several months during some of the transition time while we were in between houses and we made a total of $11,700 in rental income. So all-in-all we made $16,700 on our first flip.

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DIY Instant Photo Accent Wall

I had some fun with this quick and easy DIY project today.

I recently received one of these Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 Instant Camera‘s as a gift and I have since been documenting some of my favorite moments of our family.

My camera-shy 2 year-old loves it and actually poses for the pictures because she is so excited to see them print out and watch them develop.

We had this blank white wall in our kitchen. At one point, it housed a small array of framed pictures and art and then around Thanksgiving-time it became our wall for seasonal decorations that changed with the seasons right up to Valentine’s Day. I wasn’t particularly keen on continuing the seasonal decorations by filling my wall with green shamrocks or multi-colored Easter eggs. So I decided to use my new gift to create a collection of family photos to fill the space.

It was easy enough to do. It took about 5 minutes (after I snapped and collected all of the photos). This is the camera I used:

I needed 2 packs of film for this project. Each pack comes with enough for 10 photos and my project used 16.

I had some cute wooden push-pins that I thought about using to hang the photos, but I decided I’d rather keep the simple, straight lines of the photo grid instead. So I adhered the photos to the wall with good old Scotch tape. I lined them up as straight as I could (without using a ruler) and the tape allowed me to continue to adjust if one of the pictures looked crooked.

The final product: A DIY Instant Photo Accent Wall with some sweet family moments!