Cheap Kitchen Makeover Ideas

The kitchen is a make-or-break piece of your house. You can add vinyl laminate flooring throughout the house, scrape the popcorn texture from the ceilings and give everything a fresh coat of paint.

However, if buyers walk into the kitchen and see a lime green wall-oven grinning at them, they are going to run screaming from the property.

The trick with kitchen makeovers is that they are quite expensive. Most of us want to gut the kitchen and “do it right.” However, this only makes sense if you are going to live there for a while.

For the rest of us, there is plenty of room to compromise. You can improve the attractiveness and usability of your kitchen without investing in a complete makeover.

Follow these tips for a quick and easy kitchen uplift that will increase the value of your house without breaking the bank.

Update The Appliances

Depending on how you plan to list your house, you may or may not include appliances.

If you are leaving your appliances, you will want to make sure that they are less than ten years old.

You don’t have to buy the best of the line for a house that you plan to sell. By shopping at scratch and dent stores, such as Best Buy’s “returned item” section or Sears Closeouts, you can get like-new items at a tremendous discount.

Craigslist and Facebook marketplace are two other areas that are tremendous for finding appliances in excellent condition for a tiny fraction of the original cost.

The real trick is when upgrading those ugly, antique wall ovens. You will likely need to invest around $500 for a new oven that is close to the same size as the old one.

Additionally, you will likely need to run a new section of wire to ensure you have adequate voltage and a low risk of fire.

However, once you get that upgraded, you will find that your house will sell much more quickly, and at a much higher price.

Use Grout Paint

Grout paint may be one of the best-kept secrets by people who flip homes.

It doesn’t matter how nasty your kitchen grout is. With a toothpaste and grout paint, you can completely refresh your grout lines in one afternoon.

Grout paint also holds up well. In a highly-trafficked area, it only needs to be redone about every five years to keep the area looking fresh.

The thing about painting and resealing your grout is that it makes the room feel imperceptibly clean and bright. People struggle to put their finger on it. But they feel the difference the instant that they walk into a room.

Pull The Carpet

If you are so lucky to have a kitchen with a carpet, then you must remove the carpet. You can add a luxury vinyl plank floor or a waterproof laminate.

Even linoleum or linoleum tile is more acceptable than a carpeted kitchen.

Add Can Lights

The kitchen is the heart of the home. Families spend hours in their kitchen, and you want it to be as inviting as possible.

Can lights are a fun way to add a little more excitement and brightness to any space.

Thanks to the new LED can lights, you can often add new lights to an existing wiring circuit with minimal electrical work.  If you have a good impact driver (https://www.tooltally.com/best-impact-driver/), you can easily use a spade bit to drill holes for new wiring.

Drop lights are another popular feature to consider, especially if you have a bar in your kitchen.

Whichever one you go with, you want enough lighting that your kitchen feels warm and inviting.

Replace Counter Tops

The countertops are an important part of your kitchen.

While we wall wants granite it gets costly. However, sometimes you can find year-end closeouts on your granite, if you aren’t too picky on color.

Quartz is another excellent countertop type that costs much less than granite, but is considered to be high-end and is quite attractive to home buyers.

Paint The Cupboards

This might be the easiest tip on this list. If you have put in new appliances, pulled the carpet, cleaned the grout, and added new countertops, the last thing to look at is the cupboards.

A natural cupboard facelift is to use a matte or eggshell finish paint to give your cupboards a fresh look. These days, all paints are easy to clean, and most cupboards have a matte finish.

Updating your cupboards with a modern painting style helps your house feel much more modern.

For the finishing touch, you can add new knobs on your cupboards.

Add A Dishwasher

The dishwasher is the quintessential appliance. Since the 1950’s we’ve been mesmerized by the idea of appliances that make our lives easier.

The dishwasher is the appliance that every household is going to use two or more times a day. And home shoppers are going to notice if it is missing from the kitchen.

You never want to give up cupboard space if you can help it. However, the dishwasher is one appliance where it makes sense to pull out a cupboard.

The good news is that more dishwashers are about the same size as a standard below the counter cupboard. It should take some careful cutting, a little electrical work, and some plumbing to get it put in.

Depending on the house codes in your area, you may be able to do the work yourself.

Once the preparation work is done, dishwashers are fairly cheap to buy.

List Your House!

Now, you can decide if you love your kitchen so much that you never want to move, or if you are ready to list it for top dollar!

For many homes, this entire makeover will only cost a couple of thousands of dollars. The real secret is in your ability to find countertops and appliances at a fraction of the retail price.

As long as you aren’t too hung up on a style, saving money on these parts of your kitchen facelift will pay off in thousands of dollars when you are ready to sell.

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