£1000 to make kitchen presentable? Pics

[HarriesofHarrogate]

Pics below. I need some inspiration.

Our kitchen needs completely ripping out but that's not possible. We've about £1000 to make it non-embarrassing. The pics don't show the full grottiness.

I've not done anything like this before so I'd appreciate some help on how realistic the shopping list is and any inspiration.

We need:

• replacement cupboard doors. B&Q carcus. Ours are missing/damaged.
• something on the floor. The marks on the picture are stains and chips. I'm guessing the budget means flattening the tiles somehow and covering in lino rather than retiling? I'm not sure what is under the tiles.
• something on the huge window. It turns the room into a furnace but I've no idea what practical covering would work?
• paint and tiles. Would love some fancy/quirky tiles but not sure how to keep the budget low or what would work in the space?

Each side

I’m no expert but I despised my small and very old kitchen. Similar to you had a budget. Anyway if the cupboards are in working condition as in they don’t need completely replacing I would cover them with dc fix liner. There’s many different designs and it actually looks great when stuck on. It cost me about close to 100 pounds only to line all the cupboards in my kitchen (it is small though) and the cupboards looked new. This is the same for the worktop aswell. It does take some effort though but it was well worth it and SO CHEAP!

Also the floor, I also wanted to replace our floor with Lino but some companies were really funny with removing the old ones because apparently they were just too old and wouldn’t do it on top. So I just bought a vinyl mat which is doing the job perfectly. Just google vinyl mat and you can get quite funky designs. They are over 100 pounds though depending on the size. But you can always go to a carpet shop and ask them about your floor, it doesn’t actually cost too much to replace with vinyl.

You do have more of a budget then I did so you could probably explore more ideas. But have a look at the dc fix coverings online and see what you think. It definitely made me appreciate my kitchen a bit more and not give me anxiety every time I walked in.

Good luck!

Also a lick of paint on the walls would do wonders!

We got some replacement doors here. I know some people get a bit sniffy about them, but I'm quite pleased with the result. 10 cupboard doors and 6 drawer fronts for about £350 if I recall correctly. I suggest you get a flooring company out to give you some options for your floor; they'll know what can be done.

Painting the walls and a new floor would make a huge difference!

What's going on in that corner above the window? Is it damp plaster or something else?

Personally...
I actually don't think its too bad....?

The paint currently on the wall makes it look worse than it is...
I would paint the walls - put some shelves up, and paint the floor. Probably save you oodles that you can put in the fund for when you can redo the whole thing.

Have you checked out pinterest?

I thought the walls are just plaster.

Could you paint the cupboards?
New worktops would help and an upstand - cheaper than tiles over the full wall.
Paint door and door frame
Paint the walls.
Remove curtain thing at the door
Vertical blinds for the Window?
Tiles on the floor

Replace the floor, paint the walls, get new doors to replace the missing ones. Put up a towel rail or hooks and stop hanging them out of drawers. For £1000 you could get the worktop replaced with a new laminate one too.

The actual kitchen is acceptable. You need to get rid of the mould and paint the walls, blinds and new flooring.

In a small kitchen you need a cooker hood to take away the steam and the smells from cooking. That might also help with what looks like damp on the wall by the window. You can get a decent hood for £100 or under (try www.myappliances.co.uk/cat/box-cooker-hoods or at B&Q), and I think that would be well worth it.

I would also get some wall cabinets for either side of the cooker hood, maybe getting the same doors for the remaining cabinets and units that you have. I can't work out if you have kickboards under your counter units? If not, I suggest you look at lifting the existing tiles and replacing with other floor tiles. Otherwise I would suggest putting down some underlay and then either a nice laminate or vinyl flooring up to the kickboards.

Paint the ceiling and walls, and I reckon you're still under £1000.

• extractor hood above the hob
• take the curtain and rail down from the door
• tiled splash back behind the hob would be easy to do and cheap.
• lick of paint
• new flooring, there’s some lovely modern lino and vinyl flooring around these days
• paint the door and doorframe
• keep the cupboards as they are, but paint them if needs be, even add new handles

I think all of that would be less than your budget!

Do you have somewhere else you coukd put a freezer? An outhouse or under the stairs cupboard maybe. If you extended the counter all the way along the cooker side it would create a greater feeling of space.

You have lots of unused wall space (for a small kitchen) would you consider some open shelves maybe with nice jars for dry goods like pasta and flour. If you like having a curtain on your door you could build shelves to the side to create a deeper door frame look and give somewhere for the curtain to sit.

If your window view is less than inspiring, as is my kitchen window view, you could consider putting a couple of cut to size toughened glass shelves in front of it with all your glasses stored on it.

Or if you want to go really wild is their any mileage in moving the door to the window location and shrinking the window above the sink?

I don't have many tiles in my small kitchen(just a few above the sink). My cooker splash back is a 60cm Ikea rail with two heavy 30cm wide chopping boards pushed together on it. Easy to use to chop and easy to remove to clean. We have wipeable kitchen paint, worth the extra few pounds as five years on an annual sugar soap wash down plus more regular wioes and it looks good.

Forgot to add, Pinterest is great for inspiration for these things. I hated my old small kitchen, but a few small touches and I loved it.

Oooh how about one of those glass splashbacks?

Get a perfect shade of white- not stark, but with fantastic coverage.

Get some stylish art / framed pics and a big clock

A big rug secured down

Clear the sides and get a few expensive looking cannisters and new kettle & toaster

Get a couple of high gloss bright/ frosted glass chopping boards instead of replacing any of sides

@Forosu - I've never heard of that. I'll take a look. Thank you. We're only replacing the cupboard doors but the carcuses are showing their age so if we could do something quick and cheap about those that would be great. The counters are OK for the most part.

If we lift up the floor tiles, based on the rest of the house, there will be horrors underneath that we just can't deal with right now mentally or financially! Haha! Is a vinyl mat literally a mat? There is a small hallway just behind one of the pictures and the flooring needs to be the same as the kitchen.

Definately painting it! We did have some paint which was the same range as the bathroom. We painted the bathroom and despite the paint being bathroom/kitchen paint it was awful so we didn't bother using it in the kitchen. That was years ago.

@Knittedfairies that site seems OK and just what we're after. Is there a reason people get sniffy?
I just want a clean kitchen!

Retile floor, paint, replace fronts and could you get some fancy tiles but maybe as a splash back for the oven area with a coupe of top cupboards either side or something?

@Robs20 - any suggestions on the floor? We really, really, really don't want to pull the tiles up.

@wowfudge - it's staining from a previous issue with the guttering. The guttering is sorted now and the plaster is dried out.

@IamtheOA - it's plaster on the walls. Apart from the stains and a crack on the ceiling which we'll fill, the plaster is sound.

Paint the floor? We can't because the tiles are chipped and cracked but I've never heard of painting floor tiles before. Wouldn't it wear and be sloppy?

Sloppy = Slippy. :)

Literally just a mat which you can clean like a normal kitchen floor. (Broom and mop!) This is the one I got but there are more designs, like I said you could get quite funky ones if you wanted. It obviously doesn’t cover the whole floor. But my one covers most of it which kept me happy enough. You can also get more narrow ones, your kitchen looks more rectangular whereas mine is more box shaped.