When I first moved into my fixer-upper house, the kitchen was in a state. However, we didn’t have the budget available to be able to completely renovate the room so I had to get creative with some easy (and frugal!) fixes.

It made the kitchen livable for a few years while we saved up for some new cabinets, so I thought I would share some kitchen upgrade ideas with you, from easy updgrades to some very thrifty upcycles. Let’s get stuck in…

1. Revamp the worktop

Among these smaller (not small per se, but not as big as a full reno) changes would be replacing tired worktops with natural wood worktops, as they are resistant, they can be re-sanded or re-oiled to renew them if they get older or a bit damaged, and they bring a warmth and classic style to the room.

You may be interested to know that a walnut kitchen worktop will cost considerably less than other countertop options, such as marble, granite or even composite surfaces. Yet it still delivers the same level of luxury finish that’ll elevate the units (even low-cost DIY options) to look like a custom-made cabinetry-standard kitchen.

2. Change the doors

If you already have a gorgeous wooden worktop that can be easily refinished and brought back to its best, you can reuse this and simply relace the doors on the units. Keeping as much of the existing kitchen as possible, such as the cabinet carcasses, worktop, sink and appliances cuts the cost of a kitchen upgrade considerably.

And, if you’re not spending your kitchen budget on those elements, that gives you a bigger budget to spend on elevated doors and hardware. You could choose a new colour, which will completely change the look of the room, or you could go classic for a traditional farmhouse kitchen look that’ll work perfectly with the existing wooden worktop.

Alternatively, you can repaint the cupboard doors you already have using suitable paint. I previously shared a quick DIY video guide on revamping a melamine kitchen with spray paint so be sure to check that out too. I loved the bright blue colour and it lasted for years, which meant we had much longer to save up for a new kitchen in the meantime.

3. Flip the flooring

The flooring in a kitchen is often the thing that wears out first. This room is usually a high-traffic area, with lots of the family using the space at once for multiple tasks, so damage is likely to occur. Vinyl tiles begin peeling off with water damage, lino can get scuffed after years of use, and stone can become stained by spilled drinks or dropped food.

It’s possible that the tatty flooring is what’s bringing down the whole look of your kitchen. So, why not try refreshing or replacing the flooring before you start tackling the cupboards? Laying down a washable or indoor-outdoor rug might be enough to cover up the floor and freshen up the room.

Or installing water-resistant wood-effect flooring over the top of your existing tiles – perhaps in a stain colour to match the new worktops – can completey revamp the space without you needing to touch the cupboards at all.

4. Revamp the walls

An even more frugal option for upgrading your kitchen without renovating might be to simply repaint the walls. If you have neutral cabinets in white or wood, these are the ideal backdrop for a bold colour choice on the walls. You’ll be amazed at what a difference a colourful wall will make to completely transform the space – all for the cost of a tin of paint.

If you’ve already got coloured cabinetry, such as black units or a bright colour, why not pick out this shade in a patterned wallpaper? You could go geometric, painterly, traditional or floral. You don’t even need to paper all the walls – just one feature wall opposite the run of cabinets can help to tie the whole room together for a cohesive look.

Plus, you can add personality to your kitchen using lighting, accessories and artwork, like I have. I personally love a dash of colour against the simple cream cabinets, it really helps to elevate the look of the flat-pack kitchen – and my neon lights are my favourite touch.

5. Update the hardware

Possibly the thriftiest update of all is to simply unscrew the handles on the kitchen cabinets and replace them with fresh new hardware. You can upgrade basic units by choosing luxe finishes such as brass, copper or wood, like I have. Just make sure the fixings are in the same place as the old handles so you don’t need to drill new holes in the doors.

Or, let’s go one step cheaper and repaint the doorknobs you already have. For the cost of a tin of chalk paint or a can of direct-to-plastic spray paint, you can upcycle the existing handles to create a completely different look. Slick black looks great against wood or white for a sleek minimalist kitchen or you could choose a vibrant or pastel colour to create a fun kitchen that’s uniquely yours.

I hope these five ideas have helped you to uncover new ways to upgrade your kitchen without having to splash the cash on a full renovation. Let me know in the comments below what home hacks you’ve already used in your kitchen and what other tips you have for a kitchen update, I’d love to hear your ideas!

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Your kitchen appliances play a crucial role in daily life, helping you prepare meals efficiently and keep your household running smoothly. Over time, they can become less efficient, unreliable, or outdated, making it harder to enjoy your time in the kitchen.

In the past, I’ve had times when I’ve taken food out of the oven after its recommended cooking time, only to find it’s half-baked. I’ve also spotted puddles in the bottom of my fridge, leaks on the floor under my dishwasher and rust appearing on the microwave. And don’t get me started on limescale in the kettle and coffee machine!

But thankfully, these issues didn’t occur all at once. It would be really expensive if you had to replace all of your appliances at the same time!

If you can keep an eye out for these signs that it may be time for an upgrade, you can slowly replace them one by one over the years, meaning you don’t have to splash the cash all at once on multiple appliances. Here are some things to look for:

1. Your Appliances Are No Longer Energy-Efficient

Older appliances tend to consume more energy compared to modern, energy-efficient models. If your electricity or gas bills have been steadily increasing, your outdated appliances could be the culprit. Many modern appliances, such as a Smeg built in oven, are designed with advanced energy-saving features that not only reduce your carbon footprint but also help lower your household expenses.

Energy-efficient appliances often carry ratings that indicate their performance in terms of power consumption. If your current appliances don’t have an energy rating or if they fall short compared to newer models, upgrading could provide long-term savings and environmental benefits.

2. Frequent Repairs Are Adding Up

If you find yourself constantly calling a technician to fix your appliances, it’s a clear sign that they are reaching the end of their lifespan. While occasional repairs are normal, frequent breakdowns can be costly and inconvenient.

For example, when the hinge on my oven door broke – yes, the door came off in my hand – I tried to source the part from the manufacturer to replace it. However, the hinge section was no longer available (that’s how long I’d owned the oven) and finding a compatible part would have cost as much as replacing the whole cooker. So it made sense to get the very old, much-used oven recycled and install a new, more energy-efficient one instead.

Investing in a new appliance rather than continuously repairing an old one can save you money in the long run and provide peace of mind with reliable performance. I now realise just how poorly the old oven had been working; that was the one that didn’t always completely cook food, so it needed to be turned up to a high temperature and baked for double the time. Not very efficient.

3. Your Kitchen Doesn’t Meet Your Needs Anymore

As your lifestyle changes, your kitchen needs may evolve as well. Perhaps your family has grown and your fridge no longer has enough space to store groceries efficiently. Personally, I grew so much fruit and veg on my allotment that I needed a larger freezer to store all my produce – the little box at the top of the fridge certainly wasn’t big enough.

Maybe you’ve developed a passion for baking and your outdated oven can’t keep up with your culinary ambitions. Upgrading to modern appliances with features tailored to your lifestyle can make cooking more enjoyable and stress-free.

4. Strange Noises or Performance Issues

Appliances should operate quietly and efficiently. If you’ve noticed unusual noises, such as grinding, buzzing, or rattling sounds, it could indicate internal issues. Additionally, if your fridge struggles to maintain the right temperature or your oven takes longer to preheat, it might be time for an upgrade.

New appliances are designed to operate quietly and consistently, ensuring a better experience in the kitchen. So, if you’ve got some strange noises coming from your kitchen when an appliance is running, it’s time to keep an eye on it (or keep an ear on it!) to see if it needs repairing or replacing in the near future.

5. Outdated Technology and Features

Kitchen appliances have come a long way in recent years, with smart technology and innovative features making daily tasks easier and more convenient. If your appliances lack modern functions like programmable settings, touch controls or smart connectivity, upgrading could significantly enhance your kitchen experience.

Smart appliances can be controlled remotely via smartphone apps, allowing you to monitor your fridge’s temperature even when you’re not in the kitchen or set the cooking time and temperature of the oven. Or a smart dishwasher can use sensors to adjust the cycle and water usage depending on how dirty the dishes are, reducing your energy bills. These advancements can make your home more efficient and adaptable to your busy lifestyle.

6. Visible Wear and Tear

Over time, appliances can show signs of wear and tear such as rust, discoloured surfaces, or worn-out handles. While some cosmetic issues can be addressed with minor repairs, extensive damage may impact performance and hygiene.

If your appliances look outdated and tired despite your best efforts to maintain them, replacing them with modern, stylish alternatives can improve both aesthetics and functionality.

7. Inconsistent Cooking or Cooling Performance

If your oven no longer cooks food evenly, or your fridge has warm spots, it could be a sign of declining performance. Cooking inconsistencies can lead to wasted food and frustration in the kitchen – this was certainly the case with my old oven. I even had to buy an oven thermometer to check if it could get up to temperature, and it rarely did.

When you can’t ‘make do’ with poor performance any more, upgrading to an appliance with precise temperature control and improved technology can help you achieve better results and reduce food waste.

8. Your Appliances Don’t Match Your Kitchen Design

If you’ve recently renovated your kitchen but you’ve kept your old appliances and they look out of place, it may be time for an upgrade. Modern appliances come in various finishes and styles that can complement your kitchen’s aesthetic. Stainless steel, matte black, or integrated designs can enhance the overall look of your space while offering the latest technology.

Sure, there’s no need to update an appliance if it’s still working well but just is no longer the look you like – but combined with other issues like energy efficiency, poor performance or repairs required, it sometimes makes sense to recycle the old, much-used appliance and choose one that suits your new kitchen style and your personal needs.

When decorating the kitchen, I chose the fridge then the paint – it took multiple tester pots to find the right colour!

Upgrading your kitchen appliances is an investment in efficiency, style, and convenience. If any of these signs resonate with you, it might be the right time to consider making the switch to newer, more advanced models that align with your needs and lifestyle. Let me know in the comments below if you’ve had issues with your appliances and what you decided to do.

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I’ve rented homes for most of my adult life and I know how important it is to keep the property in good condition in order to get your deposit back when you choose to move. In fact, I’ve basically repainted the house each time that we’ve moved.

But there’s one thing you can’t easily refresh – the flooring. Whether carpets, laminate or lino, its always a big and expensive job when you have to replace it so I think prevention is the best method here, which is why I’ve come up with a quick and easy DIY project to make your own runner rug.

This can help to protect flooring from wear and tear in high-traffic areas – think hallways, walk-thru living rooms and at the back door in the kitchen. If you’ve covered up the flooring, the rug will take all the impact of walking through these areas and keep your deposit safe!

Plus, it’s a great way to add a dash of personality to your rented home. Alongside curtains, cushions and bedding, adding a rug lets you add a pop of colour or some pattern to the otherwise neutral interior. So you can feel like your home reflects your own style of decor, even without decorating any walls.

I’ve shared this full renter-friendly DIY project on the Do It With Cans tutorial website, where you can find lots more inspiration for upcycling and decorating. All the projects use craft and DIY materials that can be bought in cans, as metal is endlessly recyclable and therefore a more sustainable way of upcycling.

Be sure to check out my step-by-step guide on How to DIY a Custom Runner Rug to Protect Flooring if you want to create this project yourself. All you need is a jute or signal rug that you’d like to upcycle – the best part is that you can use an old secondhand rug and paint over any marks to cover up stains.

By the way, in the photos of my living room above, you can see another of my projects – how to upholster a padded topper to convert a coffee table into a footstool. Another added bonus is that if the design you stencil onto your rug becomes scuffed in the future, you can easily bring it back to new with a quick refresh with spray paint – or completely change the colourway to match when you get new soft furnishings or move house.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have a go at making this runner rug for yourself, and I’d love to hear what shapes or designs you decide to go for (there are many ideas in my Do It With Cans tutorial). Also, I’d love to see photos of your creations so please do tag me in your snaps on Instagram @Cassiefairy.

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Christmas is often a time that family and friends gather together and therefore we’ll have more people than usual visiting our homes. Plus, we’re probably catering for them so our kitchens will be working at full-blast throughout the festive period.

So, if you’re planning to improve your kitchen, now would be the perfect time to kick off those updates and get the room completed before December. If you order the items you need right now it shouldn’t take long for the cabinet doors, countertops or appliances to be delivered and fitted.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to welcome guests into your house and gather around a new island for festive nibbles in your freshly decorated kitchen? And surely it would be handy to have a new work surface for all the food prep for Christmas dinner?

But you don’t need to spend a fortune (and all your Christmas savings) to get the cosy kitchen update of your dreams – here are some tips to get a luxe look quickly and frugally…

1. Refresh the worktops

There’s often no need to replace a whole kitchen in order to completely transform the space – in fact, it’s more sustainable to work with what you’ve already got. For example, you can simply remove your old stained wooden worktops or scratched laminate countertops and change them for luxurious new quartz worktops instead.

This is possibly the quickest and least labour-intensive option for refreshing a kitchen before Christmas. In fact, your new granite or quartz worktop could be installed within as little as one week! And you won’t believe what a difference it can make to elevate your existing cupboards and everyone who visits will assume you’ve done an impressive kitchen remodel when you’ve only splashed out on some gorgeous new work surfaces.

2. Update the cabinets

Similarly, there’s no need to remove your whole kitchen and start again. The cabinet carcasses can easily be reused, meaning you won’t need to make too much mess in the kitchen – just unscrew the doors and either paint them or replace them. It’s thriftier and more eco-friendly to reuse what you already have anyway!

I previously decided to update my old melamine cabinets using spray paint to completely transform them into a whole new kitchen. This upcycling project didn’t take me too long and it made the kitchen last an extra 6 years! Plus, don’t underestimate how much of a difference new handles can make – a plain cupboard door can be completely elevated with a glitzy new handle.

If you opt for the opposite colour to the existing kitchen, it’ll look totally new to your guests and, coupled with a new worktop, will allow you to keep your old kitchen looking fabulous for decades to come. A great way to create a kitchen that works all year round is to choose light colour doors with marbled surfaces and gleaming gold-tone taps and handles.

This creates a snowy Christmassy vibe at this time of year and will look equally fresh throughout the Spring and Summer – just adding a few accessories can completely change the feel for the seasons.

3. Paint the room

One of the cheapest options to revamp a kitchen is to repaint the walls in a fresh new colour. Even if you don’t touch the cabinets or surfaces, changing the wall colour to something vibrant, or painting a white room in a darker hue, can make a big difference.

If you want to create a cosy ambience in the kitchen that’s ideal for the autumn and winter, those darker colours on the cabinets, slick granite surfaces and warm tones on the walls will look great. Or you could just add artwork and accessories in autumnal colours to bring a bit of seasonal drama to the space.

4. Add extra space

I don’t mean extending the room – I’m talking about adding more storage and preparation space by adding a kitchen island. If you have a U-shaped kitchen or long run of cabinets, it’s easy to add an extra section to the end to make an L shape that serves as an island. Or you can add a cluster of new cabinets in the middle of the room.

All you’ll need are two or four low-cost units (depending on the position of the island) and you can tie them into the rest of the room by using the same worktop. It’s a rather cool design detail to have cabinet doors in a different contrasting colour on the island to really make it a feature of the room.

If you’re painting the existing cabinets you can use the same paint on the new doors, or if you’re just replacing the doors, order a few more to make sure the island matches and looks like it was always there.

The benefits of an island at Christmas (and all year!) is that it gives guests a space to gather around if you’re serving up drinks. Plus, it gives you more prep space for big meals and your visitors can chat to you while you carry on cooking. Also – and this is my favourite reason – it’s an instant buffet table for your festive nibbles and cheese board!

I hope these frugal ideas will help you to transform your kitchen in time for Christmas. Let me know in the comments below what you’re planning to do in your own home to freshen up the kitchen. And I’d love to hear your thrifty kitchen hacks for making a luxe space on a budget.

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I’ve realised that I haven’t fully shared my recent kitchen makeover on my blog so today I’m putting together some tips to DIY your own kitchen revamp, without the massive expense. I thought this might help if you have been wondering: How can I get a new kitchen on a budget?

Believe me when I say that we had a tight budget but we managed to complete our new kitchen for much less than planned, even with the cost of new appliances, cabinets, flooring, electrics and decorating supplies. Here’s how:

What can you reuse?

My first tip for any project is to figure out what you already have that you can reuse. Are the cabinet carcases good enough that you only need to replace the doors? Do you have a freestanding fridge or oven that you can incorporate into your new room? Does the dishwasher work just fine so you can save on the cost of fitting a dishwasher by leaving it plumbed in?

The more things you can save and reuse or rescue and upcycle, the lower the cost of your kitchen makeover will be. I kept my existing oven, which not only saved me the price of replacing it – about £600 – but also the fitting cost for a gas engineer to come to the house to disconnect the old one and install the new one.

I also kept the pantry, which we were considering removing to make more room in the kitchen. Keeping it saved me from having to buy extra cabinets for storing food, as I already had ample space in the pantry. Plus, it didn’t need redecorating: all we needed to do was continue the new flooring into the pantry to create a cohesive look.

Finally, we also kept the splashback tiles that we’d previously installed. This was a little fiddly as we needed to make sure that the new cabinets and worktop finished at the same height as the bottom of the tiles, so there was a lot of measuring needed.

But it was worth it to not have spend out a second time for tiles (which had only been added a couple of years earlier) and, honestly, we didn’t want to have to install any more tiles. After tiling my bathroom, I’d be happy to never see grout again! By the way, just look at the wallpaper we found behind the old units – wow!

What can you do yourself?

I’d argue that the biggest cost of getting a new kitchen is the installation itself. The units don’t vary much in price – it’s only the doors that add on or reduce the cost of the kitchen. But it’s the labour costs of having the kitchen fitted that will almost double the budget of your project.

So, if you can have a go at building the cabinets and installing them yourself, you will make significant savings, which can be spent on other items – for example, we fitted the units so we could afford to buy a lovely teal fridge-freezer.

Honestly, it’s not hard to fit a kitchen. After all, they come with building instructions! If you’ve ever made flat-pack furniture, you’ll easily be able to build the frames and add the doors. Sure, it takes time – after the fourth set of kitchen drawers, I was getting rather tired, but that’s because it was 10pm and we’d already built and hung the wall units and fitted the under-sink cupboard.

If I can do it, anyone can – and you’ll save big on the cost of your kitchen if you build it yourself.

What you DO need to spend on…

It’s important to make sure that the electrics are correct in the kitchen, as you’ll often have multiple appliances going at the same time and you want to make sure that the electrical supply can handle that. We already had a few sockets around the room but running power leads to them would be messy, with plugs and wires everywhere.

So, we got an extra ring of sockets fitted that were positioned in the correct places to power the dishwasher, washing machine, extractor and fridge. We even asked the electrician to add extra sockets in convenient locations for the microwave and coffee machine so that we could position them where we wanted then rather than the old sockets dictating the position.

Plumbing is also a key thing to get right, although I think of it as just a big version of a toy K’Nex building set – the pieces can be just pushed together, tightened up and technically should work. Even so, you don’t want leaks inside your new cupboards or creating a pool of water under your washing machine.

If you’re not reusing the existing pre-plumbed items (dishwasher, washing machine, sink) to save money, you’ll probably need to hire a plumber to get everything correctly plumbed in and working.

Make small mistakes rather than big ones

I’m mentioning this because we decided to make ‘little mistakes’ with the paint and finishes before we tacked the makeover so that we could see what the colours looked like in our space. And most of them, we decided against! Even though we bought 15 paint samples, this was a much cheaper exercise than buying tins of paint and deciding that the colour wasn’t right after all.

The problem we had was that the fridge-freezer was a lovely teal blue colour but so many of the lighter blue paint colours didn’t work with it at all. Luckily enough, the teal was exactly the same colour as the Rust-Oleum paint we’d previously used for our vintage cabinet and back door.

But finding a lighter version proved very difficult. If you’re interested, we eventually went for duck egg kitchen paint from Wickes, which is a lovely aqua-sky-blue-on-a-sunny-day.

When it came to ordering the cabinets, we chose Ikea units because the prices were the lowest out there for the units we needed, and the quality was better than some of the other cheap cabinet frames we’d seen. But, similar to the paint situation, so many of the colours available wouldn’t have worked.

We discovered this by ordering samples of the smallest flat-pack kitchen piece – a drawer front – in a few colours. This allowed us to compare them in our home rather than in a showroom and that made up our minds. For example, a kitchen that looked like a lovely scandi green in a showroom ended up looking gloomy grey in our kitchen.

Thank goodness we didn’t order the whole kitchen in green and then have to remedy the situation after it had been fitted and didn’t look right – that could have been a costly mistake!

Anyway, that’s just a few of the tips I have for creating your own kitchen makeover and I hope that you’ve been inspired to have a go at doing your own remodelling in order to cut costs. Let me know your own handy hacks for kitchen DIYing in the comments below, I’d love to hear how you saved money on your kitchen project too.

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This article is a sponsored collaboration. The pink links in the content indicate a sponsored link or information source. The blog post reflects my own experience and the sponsor hasn’t had any control over my content

If you’ve got old, faded and stained plastic chairs that are in need of a revamp, here’s a quick and easy way to renovate those vintage vinyl seats…

This is a simple project to makeover your plastic garden chairs, office seats or retro chairs, to make them look as good as new and to keep them out of landfill.

Just look at how horrible and stained the old chairs looked before I upcycled them – I almost walked past them at the car boot sale! It was only the thought that I could possibly try some methods to revamp the plastic that gave me the confidence to snap them up.

Plus I loved the vintage style of these Steelux swivel chairs and knew they would look right at home in our 1950s house. But I wasn’t about to bring them into the living room until I has thoroughly cleaned and revamped them. Here’s a quick video (less than two minutes) to show you what I did to upcycle these plastic and vinyl seats.

You will need:

• Cleaning products
• DIY Tools
• Plastic spray paint – I used Direct to Plastic in white
• Vinyl spray paint – I used Rust-Oluem Vinyl spray paint in black
• Metal spray paint

In just a few simple steps I was able to turn these old plastic chairs into something clean, fresh and rather cool for my home. Steelux chairs are a great mid-century modern design and, even though it might not be authentic to refresh the vinyl and plastic with spray paint, at least they haven’t been chucked away and have a new lease of life in my house.

This technique isn’t just for this type of chair – you could use it to refresh outdoor chairs too, such as plastic sun loungers or patio table chairs. You could also use the methods to renovate a plastic office chair that’s seen better days or to refresh any plastic or vinyl pieces in your home. As long as you get the right spray paints and prepare the surface well, you’ll be able to revamp any plastic you like!

Let me know if you have a go at this DIY upcycling project yourself in the comments below and I’d love to see ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of the chairs you’ve upcycled so please tag me @Cassiefairy on Instagram in your pics. Thanks!

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The eagle-eyed of you might have spotted some elements of my new kitchen in the blog post I shared about adding personality to a kitchen with lighting and artwork in January – so you’ve already had a sneak peek at the cupboards and colours we went for.

The whole kitchen is a creamy off-white colour – basically, the cheapest Veddinge range from Ikea – so we wanted to elevate the basic units with interesting finishes and textures in the handles, worktop and flooring.

By installing the lowest cost kitchen cabinets ourselves, we managed to save £1000s of the usual price of a kitchen, which meant that more of our budget was available to spend on the practical appliances we really needed.

But that doesn’t mean that we didn’t make some aesthetic choices along the way. I knew that I wanted wooden handles, and had managed to source some unfinished ones from The Handle Studio that I could stain or varnish myself.

As such, I was reassured that whatever worktop or flooring I chose for my kitchen would coordinate with the handles, as I could colour-match the wood tones myself. In the end, all that was needed to blend in the handles was a few coats of polycarbonate finishing spray, which brought up the richness of the wood grain nicely.

Expensive wooden parquet

So, with the freedom to select any wooden flooring I liked, I started to research the options. The dream was to have a parquet floor, as it would fit into our 1950s house seamlessly and look like it was always meant to be there.

However, the cost of installing a solid wood parquet floor – even if I sourced old secondhand planks – would have sent us spiralling over budget straight away. This led me to start searching for other options to get that panelled wooden floor look at a much lower price.

Practical luxury vinyl tile

The first stop on my journey was to check out Luxury Vinyl Tile flooring. This type of floor has the realistic appearance of wooden planks but is maintenance-free, with a spill and stain-resistant surface.

It’s easy to cut and install, and often has an integrated underlayer (one less thing to buy!) that will help to even out imperfections on the existing flooring.

I considered achieving a similar patterned wood look with sheet vinyl, but I didn’t like the idea of using lots of adhesives to attach the flooring, preferring instead to find a click system that does away with glues altogether. Vinyl click flooring is hassle-free to fit, simply clicking together in super-fast time, which makes it a great flooring option for DIYers like me.

Low-cost laminate flooring

I decided to compare the costs of LVT with laminate flooring in a herringbone design and with a traditional oak colour. Depending on your choice of product, the prices are similar so it comes down to personal choice – if the colour you want isn’t available in LVT, you could use laminate instead and it will be installed just as quickly and easily.

One thing to consider is that some laminate planks aren’t waterproof so be sure to choose a product that’s suitable for kitchens or bathrooms to get that water-resistant finish. That said, if you have a big leak or floor, laminate flooring will probably swell or blow apart, so be aware of this.

Chevron design click-fit planks

As soon as I discovered the planks in a chevron design, I was sold. It would help me to achieve a vintage vibe in the kitchen and it was available in the mid-oak tone I was hoping for. I compared a sample with the worktop and thought the woodgrain finishes worked well together.

The installation process was a breeze. We kept the old 80s vinyl tile floor beneath and laid the click planks directly on top. This saved time (and lots of mess!) compared with pulling up the old floor, which was perfectly flat and sturdy anyway.

Just one cut for each length was needed and the planks lay side-by-side yet still create that chevron pattern. Each piece clicked into the next and it was easy to cut around corners and doorframes when needed. We finished off the edges with a bead of wooden trim and a threshold strip in a matching wooden colour.

I love how textured and natural the wooden flooring, handles and countertop look alongside the white cabinets. I think the wood finish really lifts the basic cabinets to look like much more expensive units. Plus, the wood grain of the flooring brings warmth to the room, which was feeling rather cold before it we installed it.

Let me know if you’ve saved money on your kitchen makeover in the comments below, I’d love to hear how you cut costs and what you did to DIY your room.

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This article is a sponsored collaboration. The pink links in the content indicate a sponsored link or information source. The blog post reflects my own experience and the sponsor hasn’t had any control over my content

Since revamping my kitchen at the end of the year, I’ve had the feeling that it lacked personality. Although I loved the clean new units, freshly painted walls and large white tiles, it wasn’t anywhere near as ‘me’ as the old, repainted kitchen was.

That’s probably because I had upcycled the old melamine kitchen using spray paint when we first moved in, which meant that it was a colour that I loved and was something that nobody else had. Even though it looked lovely, unfortunately, the interior of the cabinets was less than lovely – in fact, they were crumbling apart.

It’s only to be expected from a kitchen that had been installed many, many years ago, and which probably wasn’t great quality at the time. So, we invested in a new white kitchen from Ikea and set about fitting it ourselves. Even though we went for the lowest-priced units and doors, the quality is excellent and we knew that we could add personality to the room using colour, lighting and custom pieces.

Lighting

After discovering just how much it cost to install cabinet lighting, we decided against this option and instead chose our own light fittings for the kitchen. The first combines light, colour and artwork; a win-win-WIN! I opted for a neon light – you can have almost any design made in LED lighting from simple images to customized neon signs.

Did you know that LED neon signs are about 80% more energy efficient than traditional neon signs? When I heard about this, started scrolling through the selection of signs available online – everything from animals and food to slogans and space themes.

I’d previously written about the home of @Knackeredmavis – a party-ready interior with pops of neon so I was inspired by her kitchen. Neon signs are available in up to 11 different colours so I picked the ice blue colour first, knowing it would be the ideal match for the paints I was using, and then chose a suitable design for the kitchen.

Knowing that it would be hung above my new fridge freezer, I thought that the ‘Chill’ LED neon sign was an apt choice! It was easy to install using the enclosed Command strips and I added the dimmer switch option so that I could control the brightness. I’m really pleased that I did because it’s so fab to be able to adjust the light from vibrant party-ready ice blue to a barely-there deep turquoise glow.

We also added a dimmer switch and dimmer bulbs to our main light fitting in the ceiling. That means we can turn up the lights to their brightest setting when we are preparing food and then dim them to a lower level when eating meals. Plus, our new cooker hood extractor has a built-in warm white light, which helps to illuminate the stovetop while we’re cooking.

Overall, the combination of lighting and its adjustable settings gives the room a relaxed ambience and means that the space no longer looks stark or too bright – just nice and cosy – and has turned it into a space that we want to spend more time in.

Colour

Although I chose white units for the kitchen, my intention was always to amp up the personality factor by adding colourful accents throughout the room. The first addition was a turquoise fridge freezer and the whole room was based around this piece. Having ordered it online, we needed to wait until it was delivered before we could choose a paint colour for the walls, and I’m glad that we did: despite trying 15 tester pots of paint, none of them looked harmonious with the colour of the freezer.

So, we headed back out to Wickes and bought their duck egg kitchen paint, which is actually more of a mint ice-cream colour. Thankfully, it matched the tone of the freezer perfectly – it’s just a lighter shade of the same blue-green colour and we used this on all the walls of the kitchen.

Amazingly enough, the fridge freezer turned out to be exactly the same colour as the spray paint I had used on our old kitchen cabinets – so the essence of the old kitchen lives on! It also meant that I could use the leftover spray paint to repaint our yellow back door in the same bluey turquoise and I could refresh the paintwork on our vintage cabinet with sliding doors.

Other colourful touches include our vintage melamine table in an orange floral print, a bright orange coffee machine and some unique artwork – but more on that in a sec. I was also able to keep the kitchen chairs I had re-covered in a star-print oil cloth fabric, as the pale turquoise colour still matched perfectly.

Artwork

Finally, for an extra splash of colour and personality, I added some artwork to the room. You may remember the large vintage-style piece in my kitchen alcove from when I made it a few years ago. It’s actually a tea towel mounted into a frame! So I kept this ‘artwork’ – and was amazed when I realised that I had subliminally ordered the exact same fridge freezer as depicted on the retro tea towel!

I also hung a colourful coastal artwork that my in-laws had bought us as a gift many years before. The perfect spot for this was beside the fridge and it looks great illuminated by the ‘Chill’ LED neon sign. At the opposite end of the run of cabinets, I hung a new piece – a very special photograph of myself and my husband that he gave me for my birthday this year.

The image is of our local beach during a very pink sunrise, and you can just about make out our silhouettes as we’re running away from an unexpected wave! Our neighbour luckily captured this image and my husband got in touch with her to ask for a copy – I absolutely love it.

I hope these ideas have given you inspiration for adding your own personality to your kitchen – or any room, for that matter. There’s nothing better than hanging artwork, adding a vibrant neon LED sign, or changing up the colours to give a space a new lease of life. Let me know how you’ve made your kitchen, bathroom or living space feel more homely after a renovation in the comments below – I’d love to hear your tips!

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If you’ve popped by my blog recently you may already know that the latest home renovation project I’m working on is the kitchen. Well, after a lot of planning, it looks like things might be finally coming together and hopefully some door samples will be arriving this weekend.

So, now I can turn my attention to the other details in the room. You may have already spotted my natural flooring blog post (we’ve gone for a herringbone parquet style, by the way) so the next important thing to consider is the window coverings. As always, I’ve done my research and here’s what I’ve discovered about kitchen window treatments…

All shutter images – California Shutters

1 STYLE

The style that I love the most for kitchen windows is wooden shutters and, in particular, cafe-style half-height shutters. This allows the light to flow into the room from above the shutter, while also providing privacy at the bottom of the window. I like to be able to adjust the amount of light in my kitchen so twisting the wide slats up or down to angle the light gives me full control.

Whether they’re full height or café-style, shutters have become really popular in recent years – probably because they’re a timeless design that really last. Plus, they can be completely folded back out of the way when you want to clean the windows or when you want to let the morning sun shine into the room.

2 MATERIAL

Shutters or wooden blinds are much more practical than curtains or a fabric roller blind in a kitchen space for a number of reasons:

• Firstly, they’re easy to clean, so you can wipe off any spills if your bubbling soup splashes up onto the blind!
• Secondly, they won’t absorb the aromas that are inevitably produced when you’re cooking something delicious – sure, the meal might have been lovely, but no-one wants to get a whiff of old garlic when they waft past your curtains.
• Thirdly, they don’t absorb moisture so won’t become damp like roman blinds or curtains would when you’re boiling up something steamy in the kitchen.

3 LONGEVITY

What I look for when choosing fixtures for my home is the longevity of the product as this reduces the cost-per-use overall. In the past, I’ve used roman blinds, roller blinds, plastic venetian blinds and curtains at my windows but found that none of them lasted beyond a couple of years before becoming discoloured, the mechanism breaking or the slats snapping.

This meant that I needed to replace the blinds or curtains much sooner than I have done when I’ve chosen wooden blinds and shutters. In fact, the wooden blinds in my home are still looking as good as new and working well over 4 years after installation – so that’s saved me money in the long-run, as I haven’t had to replace them. Which is precisely why I think that wooden shutters in the kitchen will be a good investment.

4 COST BENEFIT

But it’s not just the cost-per-use that’s important – the fact that I can do a DIY installation of wooden shutters means that I don’t have to pay any extra for full-service installation. Looking on California Shutters during my research, I could access plenty of step-by-step videos that guide homeowners through measuring, ordering and installing shutters themselves. I feel confident that I won’t need any extra help, so this minimises the installation costs as well as saves time.

5 VERSATILITY

Because they’re made of real wood, you can actually re-decorate your shutters if you want to change the colour in the future. The wood comes in a variety of stains, lime-washes or painted finishes but, if you revamp your space in a few years time and the shutters no longer match, you could always sand them back and refinish with a new colour of wood paint for a totally different look, or stain them a darker shade that still allows the wood grain to shine through. This means you won’t have to splash out for a whole new window treatment just because you’re decorating your home.

So, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going for some wooden blinds in my own kitchen when we renovate it in the next couple of months. At the moment, I’ve got metal venetian blinds at the kitchen window but, surprise surprise, they’ve gone rusty where they’ve been splashed from the sink. So I’m pleased to have found a suitable replacement window treatment and please do let me know your experience of wooden shutters in the comments below, I’d love to hear your tips if you’ve installed some yourself!

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This article is a sponsored collaboration. The pink links in the content indicate a sponsored link or information source. The blog post reflects my own experience and the sponsor hasn’t had any control over my content

I always knew that my kitchen needed replacing, but over the past 4 and a half years, we’ve made do with the grotty 80s kitchen that came with our fixer-upper home. Although the lovely turquoise colour certainly brightened up the room, the insides of the cabinets are just as gross as ever, and I’ve been dreaming of replacing the kitchen for years. Sadly, the outsides are starting to look a bit shabby now too, with some of the paint peeling off after years of use.

So, after a lot of saving up, it looks like my kitchen remodelling project might happen this year – BUT, that’s when all the questions started. All the things I needed to consider before I can even start painting a wall. And so many elements rely on another element being a certain way before you can decide – for example, knowing what dishwasher you’re going to buy and the size of it before you can buy an integrated appliance door to match the rest of the units.

KITCHEN UNITS

But it’s not just kitchen units, because there are so many things to consider when choosing what cupboards you’re going to use:

• The carcass of the units – do you want them to be real wood (it’ll cost you!), practical plywood or melamine. Are you happy with 15mm thick or do you want something sturdier?
• The doors – I’m not even going to start talking about all different types of doors you can get, but I’ll mention that you don’t have to always buy the doors from the same place you’re getting the kitchen from. For example, I like the idea of custom-made plywood doors that fit onto lower-cost Ikea units.
• The insides – shelves, baskets, a pull-out pantry, drawers – what configuration do you want for storing your essentials? And what exactly do you need to store? Does that food mixer need to go into a drawer and, if so, what depth will the drawer need to be?
• Handles – don’t forget this most essential part of the kitchen (unless you’ve gone for a handleless door, of course). It’s Surprising just how much handles can cost, especially the lovely wooden ones I’m looking at on Etsy.
• Fixings – Do you want wall cabinets that lift up and stay up on hydraulics or hinges? Do you want lovely soft-close doors and drawers? All these little fixings soon add up when you’re buying 15 of them for all the units.

WORKTOPS

I already have a lovely, relatively new kitchen worktop that I got when I first upcycled my kitchen cabinets a few years back. So, I’m thinking that I might be able to simply replace the units below and keep the lovely quartz effect worktop. That would be the thrifty option BUT I also want this kitchen to last, as I’m not planning to redo it again for maybe decades. Which is why I think that now would be a good time to take the plunge and invest in a granite worktop if I’m ever going to. But it’s not just the worktop I need to worry about – what about the splashback? Will I go for a matching upstand, or should I install tiles? If so, will it be mosaics, metro, large or small tiles? Patterned, colourful or minimalist?

THE KITCHEN SINK

Not just what’s above the surface, but below too. I need plugs, drains, traps, plumbing supplies, fixings for the washing machine, attachments for the dishwasher, hot and cold water feeds, hot and cold water taps, or a mixer perhaps? And that’s before I’ve even decided if I want an undermounted sink or one with a drainer, a stainless steel design or something in contemporary black or ceramic white. This area alone is one long to-buy list, most of which I don’t even understand anything about.

APPLIANCES

Sure, I already have an oven, fridge, freezer and washing machine, but do I want to upgrade any of these to be integrated? If so, will I need to buy another expensive unit to surround the fridge freezer? Maybe I should just get a trendy, vibrant retro-style fridge freezer that contrasts with the units and make a feature of it? Will I need an appliance door to fit to the front of the new dishwasher that I’m hoping to buy? And what size will it be to fit within the units?

FLOORING

I’ve already written about my search for the perfect kitchen flooring before, but that’s because the options are so many and varied. I’d love some kind of wood or parquet, but will it stand up to all the spilling I do in the kitchen? Would a marmoleum or rubber floor be better in that regard? Should I go for something sustainable like cork or bamboo? Is that even an option? So much research to do, so little time.

WALLS

I know I’m going to need to paint the walls, but what colour? I’ll only know once I figure out what colour or style of cabinets I’m getting – if it’s white, I’ll be painting the walls pastel blue; or if the doors are blue, I’ll have white walls. And what if I go for ply or bamboo cabinets?? What colour will look right with those – and will it clash with the flooring, for that matter?

INSTALLATION

Finally, are you going to install this kitchen yourself? Do you have the skills to be able to un-flat-pack those cabinets, or to cut down a worktop or to grout tiles? Will it take you loads longer than a fitter? Or is it going to save you tons of money to do it yourself?

What other questions would you ask yourself before revamping your kitchen? Did you go through this same process when you got a new kitchen yourself? If so, let me know your advice in the comments below – especially anything I’ve missed, as it would be typical if I order a whole new kitchen but completely forget about the cupboard legs. Oh wait, that’s another consideration: kickboard or freestanding? Decisions, decisions…

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This article is a sponsored collaboration. The pink links in the content indicate a sponsored link or information source. The blog post reflects my own experience and the sponsor hasn’t had any control over my content