Your kitchen is an important part of your home by any standard. It's where you eat your breakfast, prepare your food for lunch and dinner if you're not eating out, and it's really no coincidence that many parties seem to end up in the kitchen area late at night. When you're looking for a new home, the kitchen can turn out to be the deal maker (or deal breaker, more often than not) since it's the place we most need to feel at home in or comfortable with. We can overlook a somewhat dodgy family room or less than perfect bedrooms, but if the kitchen feels dark or cramped we tend to say no and move on to the next house.
So what do you do if you're not completely happy with your kitchen today?
While remodeling your entire kitchen is not an unattractive option if you have the time and money to put into the project, you have to keep in mind that this is a huge project that has a tendency to balloon both in its time frame and money spent. Many say that had they known from the start they would have to live within a building project for six months, take uncounted days off work to wait for (or wait on) unspirited professionals, and spend thousands of dollars over budget, they never would have remodeled their kitchen at all.
Let's go for the low hanging fruit instead - the kitchen cabinets. They are actually a huge part of the impression your kitchen will make, both to you and to others. You may not believe it, but if you switch out your current kitchen cabinets for a set of new ones, or possibly even just the cabinet doors, most of your friends and family who visit your kitchen will think you have gone through a complete kitchen remodeling. The visual impact you get for the low cost of changing out your old cabinets is probably the best bang for your buck you're ever going to get in a home improvement project, bar none.
For the sake of the argument, let's say even a new set of cabinet doors is out of your hardware budget. Where does that leave you? It may surprise you what you can do with a very tight spending limit. You could:
- Strip your current doors and reface or refinish them
- Get some cool new accessories, like new knobs, for an entirely different look
- Go for the rustic, unfinished look by leaving them unpainted. Note that this may require a bit of work since you need to get your cabinet doors completely free of any old paint
