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Read and have a look at how designer Vanessa Francis transformed her sister Arlene Vieria’s small kitchen makeover on a budget. Her dated space into a timeless black and white kitchen. She replaced the arched upper cabinets, green laminate counters and fruit-patterned backsplash with modern two-toned Ikea cabinetry and cool bronzed nickel hardware. Read below the full story of the two sisters helping each other to renovate kitchen.
Small Kitchen Makeover On a Budget
We’re in my kitchen, my family of four. This is my sister Vanessa. She is a designer. I brought my sister to the project because I love her taste. I just love everything she does. She had several ideas for small kitchen designs on a budget. There is a trust there I know that if I show her image of something and bring her into a store, she’s gonna give me what her thoughts are. She is an amazing cook. She cooks almost every day for her family when they’re at home. Unfortunately, in her old kitchen, it didn’t happen as often as she wanted because it was so dated and out of style. So the question remained, how to update an old kitchen on a budget?
Kitchen Cabinet Makeovers
It had the arch top upper cabinetry, it had green laminate counters and the sporadically placed fruit backsplash. We’d been in this house for 23 years. So I wanted my small kitchen makeover on a budget to last for another 23. I want to be able to have people come in and look at this kitchen and feel that it’s modern, yet it’s still charming and it’s still cozy. Typical with Builder kitchens is they stop the run of cabinetry and the counter at a certain point. So what we decided to do was to extend the counter and to put in a pantry that was up to her depth.
Lacked Storage
My old kitchen just lacked storage. I searched for many simple low budget kitchen designs or cheap kitchen design ideas on the internet. Found Bathroom Decor Ideas for Small Bathrooms and Small Apartment Bedroom but nothing similar to my case. I was always fighting to make things fit. There just wasn’t any space between the sink and the stove for prep work. Now because we actually moved the sink over and we made a longer counter, I’m able to prep my food, cook and then the garbage is right underneath, so it’s totally functional right now. I have an abundance of storage with these pantries.
No Dining Space
The kitchen itself is small and there was no other dining space in the house. This is one of the reasons why we thought to do this small kitchen makeover on a budget. So the kitchen also had to function as the dining room. So we ended up getting a smaller table and now that our kids are away at school as well. It functions well for my sister and her husband but there’s still room for when they’re all together at home. We were on a budget but we saved money. Here are some of our kitchen makeovers photos.
Black Cabinetry
We didn’t want to do an all-black kitchen. So we decided to paint the uppers white and do a two-tone kitchen and kind of elevate the look from IKEA kitchen by customizing it and having it painted. The finishes on the hardware kind of straddles the line between bronze and Nicole. I thought it would look pretty amazing on the black cabinetry. I just like that tone and tone that it brings to the kitchen.
Wood Shelf
I actually wasn’t intending initially to buy a new fridge. We didn’t want to do obviously open shelving everywhere it’s a small kitchen makeover on a budget and we needed storage but I thought one wood shelf above the sink would look amazing. I think it does it just adds the element of warmth and then she can display her collectibles. We do a few things to make the small space look bigger one of them was the floor tiles, they are 24 by 24 inches so they’re quite large. Again with the pantry, we installed the tallest pantry that they had and it pretty much goes right to the ceiling as well.
Bike Store
My sister and her husband own a bike store and bicycles. So we have a few touches that refer to that for example when it was in Vancouver I picked up this tea towel when I was in Paris with my nephew he actually purchased a vintage Tour de France poster and my sister picked up a bicycle statue.
How it Turned Out
I love how the small kitchen makeover on a budget project turned out. It’s warm, it feels bigger, it is brighter, it feels happy. The other kitchen the old kitchen was certainly dark and depressing. I love this kitchen when I texted you the other day and I was in the middle of cooking I said I love cooking. So it really brought back my love of cooking because I was actually in a slump for the last few years didn’t want to cook. and now I’ve actually cooked probably almost every day since this kitchen has gained there’s only my husband and me right now too.
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