CrafTea Kitchen Makeover - for under €500

 

Hi, Laura here (1/2 of CrafTea), with my own little piece about my summer project/ challenge - to drastically make over my kitchen for under €500. I thought I'd share my project and some of the lessons I learnt (most often the hard way!)  with the hope you find it inspiring.

Here goes...

At the kitchen table where we've had poker games into the wee hours, infinite family dinners, lazy sundays drinking coffee and reading the papers, feeding the baby, and more recently where Ali & I often work away on CrafTea and held tester CrafTea Classes ...... something about the dark suede paint walls just didnt feel right.

The kitchen was the center of the house, open plan and were so fortunate to have a nice large space which is really bright, looking into the leafy garden, with great high ceilings.

However, I think my misguided tan suede paint choice some years back,mis-matched furniture & accessories just didnt create the atmosphere you'd expect in this kitchen space. It was dark and a little dreary... so it was time for a change.

I set myself the challenge to make over the kitchen for under €500 - after all, when you have a young family, mortgage and a new business budgets are unbelievably tight. Fortunately there is a synergy to be achieved in getting creative so things just came together in a neat little way between researching, sourcing and making things for our CrafTea blog & business, and getting down to the kitchen re-design.

I started with painting so I had a pure white blank canvas. Going from a sandpapery textured dark brown paint to bright white was a nightmare. It took about 5 coats. Needless to say the fun of painting got old & tiring very very quickly. Budget wise I couldnt get those electronic/fancy paint kits or hire a professional to do the whole painting project. Things began to get weary and grim.

When I gave up painting the space after what seemed like weeks, I wanted to scrap the whole project. My arms were sore and it was a mess. Thankfully, I didnt give up... and called in a family friend to help out. Marius was a legend at blitzing through the final coats of paint and even painted those hard to reach places and ceilings. He's a real professional, and what would have taken me 20 more hours to do... he accomplished in about 4hrs.

Lesson 1 learnt - use a professional for some jobs! Your spare time is valuable & sanity deserves it.

Lesson 2 - Stay Inspired & Positive

All the while I needed to keep positive steered in the right direction when it came to realising what was possible. Websites like pinterest (thanks to some great pinners I follow!), House & Home.ie  and various blogs and photo sites were amazing at providing useful tips and inspiration when I needed it.

Heres a picture I found on Pinterest.com and took as my original inspiration. You can find the source if you click on the photo in the CrafTeaClasses boards on pinterest
















Then I wondered if I should go more 'modern and minimal' with a simple ductape design like I saw in this coffee shop in Edinburgh on a business trip..

You can make this really simply by using

• Favorite cityscape photo...
• drawing the outline of the city buildings in a light coloured chalk
• Cutting thin black ductape or insulation tape (available in loads of colours) to the desired lenghts
• Taping it to the wall like the above.

The cityscape ideas is very simple effective and awesome looking!  I love it!

However the ultimate look and feel just didnt fit with the idea I had for a warm & colourful kitchen... so I went back to my  original inspiration photo .  

So once the painting was complete, I took a break for a few weeks, put back together the kitchen so it was at least semi-functional, and chipped away researching the interior design ideas to make it really special.

P.s check out the wine cork dado rail tutorial on our blog from earlier this summer. Even though I was replacing my kitchen table chairs which required the dado rail, with storage benches, I couldnt bear to take the dado rail away.

Lesson 3 - Research Research Research - its free, and the savings can be massive!!!

Back to budgets - mine was tiny considering what I wanted to achieve... which meant I couldnt just go to one department store or online shop to buy everything I wanted to finish the kitchen once it was painted.

I really wanted to improve the storage situation in the kitchen. With craft materials, baby toys and just more 'stuff' accumulated over the years things needed a place to be tidied away without cluttering up walls with shelves and cupboards. I got several quotes for simple MDF storage benches from carpenters. Some came in way too high and others just came back too slowly. In the end my Dad made up a sample bench, I loved it, so he set to work making 2 more to go along the back kitchen wall. I was able to sell the kitchen chairs I no longer needed on www.adverts.ie which offset the cost of his materials (and thank you bottles of wine he got!). Lidl had a sale on sofa bed foam which I snapped up and I covered the bench foam with some hard-wearing curtain material I had left over.

Endless trips to IKEA, Avoca, Paint stores and Car Boot sales later and getting down to some serious DIY and crafting during baby-nap / free times ... I finished it!!!! 

1. I collected about 20 frames - most from the colorful range in IKEA which are super cheap €20
2. About 20 cushion inserts in IKEA @€1 each  = €20
3. Cushion covers from carboot sale & IKEA and I sewed up my own covers using old Tshirt and Fabric Scraps to make cushion covers = €10
4. White Paint - cheap base from Woodies (Woodies own brand)  but also decent Dulux white to finish the walls & Marius's painting services which totalled @€150
5. A4 colour printing of Vintage Posters  (sourced from Google Images & Pinterest.com) €10
6. Storage Benches €150 in materials
7. Storage Bench Seat Pads €100  (Lidl)
8. Existing Kitchen Chairs swapped with family -free

Before I went banging in 20 nails into the wall, I printed off my vintage posters and tested to see how they would look on the kitchen wall. I was able to see what the final product would look like with some non committal blu-tac.  The deal was sealed.

Lesson 4  - Add Personal Finishing Touches 

Even with the best intentions and efforts once the tough work is done (like the painting, the researching and then the sourcing & shopping) its tempting to just leave it there. Its a pity to not put your own final few personal stamps on the room you've spent so long working on.

I carefully selected some vintage posters such as these - all of which meant something to me, my husband or family:

 Heres some more ideas! 

• Painting some cheap garden wall hanging baskets so I could use them to store napkins, saucers or onions.

•  Painting an old candlestick to match the new colours in the kitchen... 

 With some cream paint ( i used a vinyl mattt) I covered the candlestick in no time, then added some red polka dots with a cotton bud.

 

 Lesson 5 - Be Thankful!

The big thank yous have to go to : 

• my Dad for making the kithen storage bench himself when carpenters quotes were just too expensive...
• Mum for finding old frames in the attic and for all the babysitting when I just needed some hours to get things done,
• to Rachel for braving IKEA a couple of times with me a very energetic & mobile 13 month old who insisted on running about the showrooms and pulling everything off shelves.  
• And to my hubbie Matt who put up with all the mess and madness over the summer in the kithcen and helped me out all the times I needed it. Needless to say he was incredibly patient and believed that one day it would look great.

And it did! Check out the before, during and afters...

 

 And its done! Heres to many happy memories around this kitchen table
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