Kitchen Remodel for $5,000

When we bought out house in Alabama the kitchen was probably the worst room in the house. The original 1983 kitchen was still intactIt had a terrible lay out, What looked like do it yourself built cabinets that were musty with sagging particle board shelves and a cheap granite tile counter top. I did not even want to unpack the boxes until I could get those disgusting cabinets out. But I had just bought the house and I didn’t have the budget for a full kitchen remodel. So what’s a girl to do? We’ll here is how we got a brand new kitchen for only $5,000.

By a stoke of luck, right about the same time we bought our house, my sister was also about to undertake a kitchen remodel. Her house was a new build with brand new 42″ cabinets that just weren’t her style. I thought, Could make those cabinets work in out new kitchen? Her kitchen was smaller than ours but I took some measurements and it looked like we might could make most of the cabinets work. What luck, we got eleven cabinets that were absolutely free(other than some demolition labor and transport.) We were also able to same a few pieces of the granite counter top and since she was going to upgrade the microwave/hood so we got that for free too.

We did a lot of arranging moved the range to another location and most of the cabinets worked great! But our kitchen was still bigger so we did have to spend some money to make it work. I found cabinets that were very similar to my sister’s at Lowes but I couldn’t be sure the stain would be a perfect match so I decide to mix and match. I used the same door style but chose a white cabinet with a glaze that matched the stain on the hand me down cabinets. For the island I took one of her base cabinets and wrapped it in bead board, trimmed it out, and painted it and glazed it to match the new cabinets.  We ended up having to buy only five cabinets. Those five cabinets were much shorter than her’s and cost over $2,000 if we would have bought a whole kitchen worth we would have easily spent $20,000.

The two pieces of granite we were able to salvage from my sister’s kitchen ended up being large enough to fit on either side of the range. We took then to a great granite installer and had them re-cut and they were nice enough to find us new granite that perfectly matched the old pieces. I had to shop around for this as some installers were not willing to work with our used granite. Together with he install the whole thing cost about $1,200 including a new under mount sink.  Another company quoted me more than twice that.

We already had a stainless fridge so the only appliances we needed to upgrade were the dishwasher and range. We got a deal on a $800 convection oven with a floor sample for only $500 and the dishwasher was full price for about $350.

The rest of the upgrades were cosmetic. We replaces about six floor tiles where we removed the peninsula and replaced it with an island. I replaced the can light over the island with a new pendant, added a new light over the sink, and some under counter lighting for about $150. The faucet on the sink was replaced with a new bronze finished one, a big expense at $238.  The back splash got new glass mosaic tiles that were only $5 a square foot at Home Depot total price about $175, and of course the whole place got a new coat of Blue Shamrock by Olympic Paints from Lowes. Add about $250 for plumbing and electrical connections and there you have it.

That is how we got a brand new kitchen for only $5,000!