Kitchen Overhaul on a Budget

Hi guys! I wanted to pop in and share a little bit about my recent kitchen makeover! 

My husband and I bought our little 1970's ranch 3 years ago. Since then, our living room has been four different colors; what used to be a playroom is now my office/ den; what used to be our guest room has changed shapes probably six times; but has now landed in its final stage as the playroom. Point being: things change in my house...OFTEN. During that time, our kitchen was sort of the "black hole" of our house.   

The thought of making any real changes felt like a daunting and expensive task. So, we left it. Actually, that's not entirely true. I did spend a grueling 18 hours taking the cabinets from chocolate brown to white.

After that, we turned a blind eye to the ugly and overcompensated for it in the rest of the house. We had big dreams of what we wanted to do to the kitchen but it was all just talk...until that fateful day when the faucet broke.

So began the remodel process. I often compare the process to the children's book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie". For those of you who don't know it, here's a breakdown:

If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to need some milk to go with it. Once he has the milk he'll want a straw, he'll need a napkin, etc, etc.

That is the story of my budget-minded kitchen remodel in a nutshell. So, let's get back to it. My faucet broke. My husband tried to repair it to no avail. We had to replace it; so I started a little online hunting. I knew the look I wanted & I also knew that I wanted a permanent fix on a temporary budget.

I found this faucet on Amazon:

It was exactly what I was looking for & Prime shipping meant that I would get it in a day! Instant gratification fulfilled.

But wait! I couldn't put my brand new faucet in the hideous, bottom of the barrel, 1970's stainless steel, overworked, underpaid, sink that I currently had. The SHAME! So, back online I was. I wanted light and bright & obviously functional! I was tired of the double basin and my kitchen vision included a white, single basin sink. Thus, the search continued and led me to The Mine where I found my budget-friendly sink that paired beautifully with my new faucet.

No Prime shipping for the sink but I'm an adult...I can be patient right? 

Now that I had those two things on order, my design wheels started turning. I knew that I had opened Pandora's box in my kitchen so it was time to game-plan how we could actually make real change happen in an affordable way. We decided to go for it. We would add one new project/ expense to the kitchen remodel each month. This kept the kitchen livable and budget friendly at the same time! For Christmas, we bought ourselves new appliances & financed them which helped spread out the expense. The next month we took a trip to Ikea and for about $500, we came home with the most beautiful walnut countertops I had ever seen (I had never seen walnut countertops before). They were pretty y'all. I have a thing for wood grain so I fell in love the moment I laid my eyes on this wood! 

Fortunately, my father-in-law is an engineer with more tools than I could fit in my whole house AND he's retired AND he's sweet, so he was happy to jump in & "help out in the kitchen"! I'm pretty handy & I'm also pretty impatient so we got to work right away. My husband went to work one day and came home to newly installed countertops, our new sink...and the catalyst for it all...the lovely new FUNCTIONAL faucet! Lucky him! 

We still had the dark & dreary backsplash but believe me when I say: it didn't stay very long. That Sunday, I took a spackle knife to it and pried away the ugly, little by little.

Next, we had to learn how to tile. This was MUCH easier than I anticipated. I went to Home depot for our subway tile & the super knowledgeable tile guy walked me through the process start to finish. And guess what!!! I followed his simple instructions and it worked! We rented a tile saw for $50 for a 24 hour period & we bought our subway tile .  By the way, in addition to the bright & beautiful aesthetic, subway tile also happens to be one of the cheapest tile selections out there. The tile cost us a whopping $44 to complete our backsplash. The associate at Home Depot recommended a pre-mixed grout & I was super glad I followed his guidance because mixing grout would've been a messy endeavor! We used Fusion Pro in Natural Gray which costs a little more than other grout but was totally worth the extra twenty bucks! We enlisted the help of my husband's brother, John, and the three of us got to work! 

The tile process took about 6.5 hours from start to finish and the end result was AMAZING! 

Within hours, our vision was complete & I was left feeling quite proud of our low stress, low budget makeover! From start to finish The whole project cost us under $2,500 (including appliances) and a couple weekends of mild manual labor. The joy from my bright white kitchen though, PRICELESS. I love a good challenge y'all so I truly enjoyed the process & was excited to learn some new things along the way! I was even able to incorporate some things from our new *For The Kitchen* Collection into the decor! Thanks for following along! 

-Rachael