Five Hundred Bucks, Buster

Our kitchen was a Hot Mess! If you've ever lived in or owned a 1950s ranch home, you would know they come with built-in knotty pine cabinets. They're constructed entirely of pine and tend to last much longer than newer cabinetry manufactured today. However, cheap knotty pine + old varnish = orange-y rustic 1950s cabinets. {Yuck!}

Luckily for us, they were painted before we moved in. Unfortunately, they were horribly painted. Like, with drips, cheap paint, no sanding, and NO primer. The knots in the wood started coming through months after we moved in. 

The paint was plain old latex satin; which is great for walls, but had no durability when it came to heavy-duty use on our cabinets.  And don't get me started on the 12 inch floor tile that were our counters and backsplash.

So, it took us two years before we were able to make any real changes in the hearth of our home and it was worth the wait!

{I know our pictures aren't the best, but you gotta work with what you got!}

Here is a lovely Before & After Fantastic Foursome I whipped up with that Picmonkey bidness today:

I do wish we had better photographs, and maybe I should whip up a little floor plan one day {'cause I just love whipping up things.} Basically we went from a G-shaped to an L-shaped configuration, which really opened up our space!

Before we would play the super fun games of "get in each others' ways and rub butts" and the ever-popular "hurry up and get out of here before we have to spend one more second of our lives in this hellhole."

Here are some more iPhone pictures of our kitchen:

- I converted four of our too shallow-to-be-useful drawers and filled them up with baskets -

-We even added dollar store contact paper to our drawers - 

-Turned a corner blind cabinet into open shelving for cookbooks and tchotchkes -

- Upper baskets are for towels while plastic wrap, foil, and dishwasher supplies are in the bottom -

Lil' bit of whimsical bling, left over from Meadow's Birthday party last week.

So that's that. : )

More to come. Until then, know this: there are real-world, real-life budget makeovers out there.

Ciao!