Kitchens are prime real estate in your home and typically the most expensive to remodel. So how do you bring your kitchen up to date without paying an arm and a leg? Well I have a couple tricks that could help bring new life to your kitchen without completing tearing it apart. This is what we did when we purchased our home and we were able to transform the kitchen in under $3500. Now keep in mind, we did the work ourselves. You can expect to spend almost double if you were to get a contractor involved.

1. Paint- Paint does wonders. I painted everything. The walls, ceilings and cabinets all received a fresh coat. Walls and ceilings are pretty straight forward when it comes to painting, but the cabinets require a little more work. The work is definitely worth it in the end! Especially on your wallet.

2. Cabinet fixtures- If you’re going to go through the hassle of painting your cabinets you should definitely upgrade the fixtures. It’s not a huge expense but it helps your kitchen pop! I personally love the crystal style knobs in our old home. They fit the vibe and time era of our home perfectly!

3. Beadboard- I personally am a fan of beadboard. I think it helps lighten a room and creates a little more dimension . Aside from cosmetics, it can also be a great solution to drywall. At our home we used beadboad to cover old plaster. Back in the day they used the plaster on the walls- and in this home specifically, they created rectangles on the lower portions of the walls for design. So we used beadboard to cover it and update the look. I love the way it turned out, not to mention the beadboard protects the walls against any denting from chairs. Win!

4. Countertop- We had a lower grade granite countertop installed in the kitchen to complete the look. We didn’t want anything real fancy because we would price ourselves out of the neighborhood. That is something else to consider when doing updates. Of course you want things to look nice, but depending upon where you live you need to be careful not to spend too much. If you never plan to move, then by all means do the house up! But if there is a possibility of moving in the future, you just want to make sure you aren’t investing more than what it is worth if possible. There are plenty of ways to make a home look nice without investing a fortune.

5. Back splash- The back splash we used was super simple. We didn’t want to get into tiling at this point because we just wanted to move in, so we used a paneling. It’s about $20 a sheet but essentially you just snap in place and glue it on. It looks really nice and is super simple and clean to install.

6. Lights- Updating a couple lights can also make a world of a difference. Not to mention, improve the lighting of the room!

So I hope this quick list helped give you a couple more ideas next time you’re thinking about updating your kitchen. Its definitely very doable on a budget. And if you can make some updates to you kitchen, it will make your whole home feel that much better. We all spend alot of time in our kitchens, so its important you like the space. Hope this helped and look forward to seeing your projects!