1970s Kitchen Makeover by Junk Love Boutique

Junk Love Boutique
by Junk Love Boutique
$6000
4 Months
Advanced
If you follow along with my home renos you will know that I am slowly working on making my boyfriends' bachelor pad feel like home. The house was built in the late 60s/early 70s and nothing - I mean nothing had been upgraded when I moved in about 5 years ago.
When this picture was taken we had aleady replaced the porcelain white sink and the white veneer countertops with a countertop and sink that Blake had leftover from a previous job. As you can see, we had a long way to go.
Between the lovely yellow and brown floors and the brown appliances that turbo cooked your food, I was so ready to make some changes. The next step was flooring.
For the flooring we bought the most durable thing we could find because we have two large dogs in the house who tend to like to run races around the kitchen island. 😌 This is like a rubber linoleum that is tongue and groove but its pliable. It is also water proof and only scratches when you move an extremely heavy piece of furniture across it by yourself! 😁 Total cost for the kitchen and dining was about $900.
We then found this amazing "farmhouse" island with chippy green and white paint that literally made me stop in my tracks. The back is open so it was perfect to hide our trash can and the dog food container for the time being. At some point I plan to cut the legs off so it sits on the floor.


...So between the last photo and this one, there was a solid year and a half of no progress. I finally ordered the appliances I wanted on Home Depot's Black Friday sale and then the chaos began.
We had to completely rework parts of our cabinets to accommodate the stove and dishwasher because we previously just had a range and wall mount oven. Had those two pieces alone not added up to over $2500 more, we probably would have kept them.
Next up - painting the cabinets. Let me just go ahead and tell you that painting your kitchen cabinets is not for the faint of heart. I worked on them in the evenings and on weekends for about 2 weeks and in that time I thought Blake and I were both going to go insane. Stuff EVERYWHERE! I did however paint the inside of the cabinets too so that made it worse.
I added thin pieces of trim around all of our cabinet doors to add a little more character. I primed everything using Kilz and then painted with Ultra White oil based paint.
In this picture you can see the base cabinets are painted. We also completely demo'd the cabinets where the wall mount oven previously was so we could use it as a pantry.
Here's a picture of the inside shelving that we put in. And a new hide-able home for the trash cans! 🙌🏻
I then built a "barn door" to go on the front of the pantry to add the farmhouse style I was going for.
After waiting 3-4 months for our refrigerator to come in, we were finally on the home stretch.
When we started this whole project we had plans to replace the countertops and sink but after we finally got the house back in order we decided to wait awhile before we begin the next phase. All of the cabinet hardware is from wayfair.com.
Here is the final result! As usual we still have several things we want to do but painting the cabinets white and upgrading the appliances has made our kitchen feel so much bigger and is so much more fun to cook in, if you can believe that! ;) Adding the pantry is probably my favorite part of the whole kitchen. As some of you may know, storage in houses built around this time is extremely limited!
And last but not least, a side by side comparison of the before and after! I hope you enjoyed following along with our kitchen reno and are inspired to do one yourself! xoxo - Nicole
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  • Nibia M Ruiz Nibia M Ruiz on Sep 23, 2017

    Beautiful work. Wish I could use your ideas but it seems everyone works with large rooms and lots of cabinet or closet spaces. What if you don't have those or are pretty limited? Where are your ideas there?


  • Mary Lamm Mary Lamm on Oct 29, 2017

    Looks Great! What are the dimensions of your kitchen?

  • Fanny Fanny on Jun 26, 2018

    What brand flooring was used? Does it come in colors? I know this is late, but I hope this is monitored. Thanks.

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