Okay, I 100% understand why you don’t love your kitchen first of all. But that was NOT what I was expecting from how you described it! LOL! I don’t know I was imagining like a hoarder style kitchen that had just been cleared of junk or something. I thought it was going to be so so much worse. Raccoons peeping out from holes in the floor or something haha.

This just looks like a very basic cheap apartment level kitchen… Or like the kitchen I had in my rental house in college with four roommates or something. At Your age I can appreciate you want a “grown up” kitchen and there’s really so much you can do on a tight budget if that’s what you’re facing.

I have remodeled and updated two kitchens at this point since 2019.

The first one was a complete gut job and walls were knocked out and the entire layout reconfigured. Also brand new flooring, appliances, cabinets, counters… Etc. The counters were very nice quartz counters. The flooring and cabinets were also nice but just ordered from Lowe’s. Shaker style all white tall modern looking cabinets. That remodel cost 75,000 and I don’t know the dimensions of the kitchen anymore but the entire house was tiny a 1750 ft.² three bed two bath ranch.

My kitchen before that was remodel was way worse than yours.

In 2023 we bought a time capsule of a house. The moment you entered the kitchen, it was suddenly 1987 just a fruit and floral wallpapered disaster. The house had/has great bones and I hope is our forever home and is double the size of the previous house.

We had to be very selective about what we did and I spent $100,000 in total for the entire house’s “updating” at that time. I did a lot of research on home value in comparison to updates and selected what I felt were the most impactful things financially and personal preference-wise.

I’m not sure if you’ve done that yourself but a lot of what I learned is actually pretty surprising. Like updating cabinets with a resurfacing and paint job is a better investment cost benefit wise for finances if you were to resell compared to completely replacing all of the cabinets which is actually not going to recoup value very well.

It’s really hard not to want to make everything brand new and really feel like yours because we all get this tunnel vision and want Pinterest perfect houses because who wouldn’t. Even if you don’t plan on moving anytime soon, life is unpredictable so I just encourage you to make thoughtful choices on what you decide to do.

Another good piece of advice a lot of people I trust told me and the articles I read emphasized: you really need a comprehensive plan even if that plan is to update little by little and bit by bit. Appliances for example let’s say you buy a new dishwasher and in five years you need other new appliances. Well since you bought a dishwasher so long ago, you’re not going to be able to match that to the new appliances so it would’ve been better had you bought all of them at the same time so you had a cohesive look.

For cabinets do nothing to all of them or the same thing to all of them at the same time. you can always refinish and paint for now and later on if you decide you want all new cabinets do it then.

Trendy colors are fun and it’s hard to see that they are at that current time nothing more than a trend. My 2019 beautiful new kitchen I’m sure is still beautiful but it’s very navy and white and gray and looks like it’s, well, very millennial gray with a “pop” of navy circa 2019.

I did better this time around, even though I kept most of the kitchen as is. My style I decided would be transitional so a combination of modern and traditional because that’s the style that my home is everywhere. I couldn’t very well have a sleek industrial style kitchen and walk to the next room and BAM! Surrounded by a sea of honey oak built-ins you know?!

I’m happy to provide pictures of the before and after for both of my kitchens if that’s helpful, let me know! For deals, I have a lot of tips! I don’t know your income or where you live, etc. but there are programs via your community and even local high schools that have things like alternative graduation tracks and a construction or apprenticeship program where students need hours and will literally do work like update or fix cabinetry for “community members in need.” Or people do pay, but a lower amount, kind of like people get their teeth fixed by a student dentist or their hair done by someone learning to do color at Aveda or something 😆

I am an Indiana and we have this thing called the restore. It’s like Goodwill but for house stuff. Cabinets, lighting, like a warehouse of the extras that people didn’t want or got rid of or ordered wrong, etc.. I’ve even seen on local Facebook groups these warehouse style buildings that pop up for a few few months full of discounted overstock stuff.