Thanks to Nita Vrabel for the helpful guest post
When I had moved into our house, I saw that the kitchen was seriously out of date. The cabinets had the dark 1970′s wood. The walls had gold, green and avocado yellow wall paper. Flooring was cracking and coming up as well. Upon looking at the counter tops, I saw that there were knife marks all across. As I started calling contractors for quotes, I discovered this was going to be very expensive if we hired someone. Some of the contractors had slipped a few secrets out to me. I was told that there was paint specifically for cabinets. My first project became the cabinets. I went to the local hardware store and purchased the materials. The cabinet paint, brushes and the plastic flooring came out to about $50. The cabinet project took a total of 6 hours between painting drying and the second coat.
Next we decided to do the walls. When I consulted a contractor company about removing the wallpaper and painting the walls, they quoted me $350. Buying paint and new brushes, I spent $45 and 8 hours painting the kitchen walls. The walls were the simplest. The only heavy duty part about painting the walls was moving the appliances to paint behind them.
The counter tops were the next to tackle. All we had to do was take the measurements for each separate partition of the counter tops. We picked out the design and had the pieces cut at the hardware store. We also bought a book on do-it-yourself remodeling HERE. The book showed us which different types of counter tops had to be uninstalled and installed in a certain way.
Deciding to do the floors last was the best decision. We didn’t want to ruin the new floor with paint, nicks and scuff marks. Knowing that the ground moves a lot in this area, we had to consult quite a few contractors. Some contractors said they could do the kitchen floor for about $2500. They had also let it slip that they would need to use a special tile grout that would expand and contract and let the floor move with the ground and concrete that moves so much. We made yet another trip to the local hardware store, bought the tile, special grout and the trough. The floor took a few days, but our kitchen is now updated and welcoming.
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