How I Planned an Impromptu DIY Kitchen Renovation
Here’s how I planned an impromptu kitchen renovation. Usually I am all clothes all day, but let’s stay on the house roll for just a second, shall we? If you follow closely enough on instastory (Side note: I am going to be better about blogging here in this space instead of lazy real time post on instastories. Hence this post), then you saw that I began covering cushions for the sweet little built in window seat we installed in the kitchen. The fabric that I am using is a remnant and goes perfectly with our kitchen. Only problem is, I just don’t love it love it. You know?
I keep finding myself saying, “I wish this was a blue and white ticking stripe instead of this gray”. But blue and white wouldn’t go with our overall kitchen especially not the painted kitchen floors that were a labor of love about a year ago. I found myself saying, if only the floors were blue and then I realized; literally nothing is stopping me from making the tile floors blue.
Hubby and I have been debating the merits of “real tile”, meaning ceramic or porcelain tile, almost since the day I finished painting our dated vinyl tile the gray and white color. We knew the painted tile would never be a permanent fix. We just hated our vinyl tile enough that we couldn’t live with it. I definitely didn’t think the strong desire for a different kitchen cushion color would be the thing to propel me towards a kitchen reno. *Slaps forehead in exasperation emoji* This is a mean case of scope creep.
Why it’s okay for me to design in stages
It’s neither here nor there that I have to change the floors because we want, what we want. And don’t worry about the time wasted on the painted floors. The way I design is in three stages
- Before- Whatever the house looked like when we originally set up shop
- During- the temporary fix to get us through
- After- the final renovation
If you fell in love with an intermediate step, “thank you, bless you” and I am so glad that you loved it as much as I did for the time. Silver lining? Those middle steps are usually really great changes for apartments or rentals. They can also give you more time to decide on permanent fixes and to really get to know a space and understand what would be most functional.
All that to say, here is where we are doing with our temporarily updated kitchen to get it to our permanent fix. As things get done, I will check things off this master list. I am working from top (ceiling) to bottom (floor) in our kitchen so here’s the order of services and some inspiration pics.
How I Plan To DIY Our Small Kitchen Refresh
- Add second layer of cabinets to our kitchen cabinets to form double cabinets. This was prompted entirely by having extra materials from our built in living room project.
- Change hood about the stove
- Install quartz countertops and farmhouse sink
- Remove temporary wallpaper backsplash and Install permanent subway or hex tiles
- Change vinyl tile floor to blue and white ceramic of porcelain tiles
- Cover bench cushion in blue and white ticking stripe.
- Add move pendant light above island and add recessed lighting*
*Was added at the last minute because it just made sense
And there you have it folks, a look into my convoluted and yet organized thoughts. This will definitely take a while. We are regular people with regular 9-5s who pay for our projects out of our actual pockets (which is zero shade to people who blog full time with sponsored post. This is simply an explanation for why our project train will pull slowly away from the station). So there you have it. Anything I should be adding to this list? Or any post you are particularly excited to see so I can remind myself to actually blog it?
P.s. Here’s the blue and white tile inspo since that prompted this whole spree.
amsnelgrove says
Looking forward to seeing the process!! I’d love to see a before and after of the laundry closet, as well. We do our home projects similarly to yall (sometimes slowly, other times all in one weekend), and I love seeing your process 🙂
prepfordwife says
Hi there, I have no clue how I missed this but absolutely. We are so slow moving though we’ve been a whirlwind lately. If you type in Laundry room in the search bar on the blog now, a post should pop up. Thank you so much!