Remodeling a 1980s Kitchen on a Budget

I shopped for cabinets first. WOW. I just couldn’t believe that cabinets for my tiny kitchen could cost so much! I explored the RTA (ready-to-assemble) cabinet. I found a company who helped with our design and the cabinets were very reasonably priced. My husband decided the prospect of assembling the cabinets was too daunting so I took a chance and called our salesperson back and told her we’d have to pass. To my amazement, the came back and said they’d ship the cabinets totally assembled for the SAME PRICE. I jumped on it. We chose a gorgeous cream maple cabinet with a nice glaze to create a pretty French country feel.

We gutted the existing kitchen, including the weird soffit shelf thing that was above one wall of upper cabinets. We stripped tons of wallpaper and prepped the walls for paint and a NEW wallpaper. We went with a textured paintable wallpaper instead of texturing the walls after stripping the wallpaper. This stuff is beautiful but be CERTAIN to use a high quality paste. We added a gorgeous toile print wallpaper – so French country.

Then it came time to install the cabinets. We determined the height the cabinets needed to be hung (I believe we gave 19″ clearance from the countertop to the bottom of the upper cabinets). We laid all of the upper cabinets out on the floor on their backs and then fastened them together before putting them on the wall. This may seem awkward (and you need a few people to make this work), but unless your wall is perfectly flat and square, mounting them one at a time and getting them even is nearly impossible. We screwed a 2×4 ledger board into the studs of the wall to be our guide for where the bottoms of the upper cabinets should hit and be level and proceeded to secure them to the wall with cabinet screws. We then set the bottom cabinets and screwed them into the wall studs as well.

The BEST decision we made was to take the bar behind the sink, down to counter height. This opened the kitchen up into the family room, and created a nice breakfast bar as well.
We installed peel and stick vinyl plank wood-look flooring. I think the planks are 6″x48.” I LOVE this floor. And seriously, people cannot believe it’s not true hardwood.

We added recessed lighting, a new chandelier that also made the kitchen so much more inviting. The only thing we hired out was the granite counters (we went with Santa Cecelia) and the travertine backsplash. We purchased a cream cast iron sink at Lowe’s along with an oil rubbed bronze faucet. I added ORB hardware for the cabinets that I bought through Amazon to complete the kitchen.

We added under cabinet lighting as well. The cabinets came with soft close drawers- which are wonderful! I changed most of the bottom cabinets to add a mix of more 3 drawer cabinets instead of mostly one draw/door combos. Check out www.underatexassky.com for more!