Great Ideas to update Oak Kitchen Cabinets

Well, it is finally time for the kitchen reveal! I told you all about my sad “no painting allowed” story on Wednesday. How the Realtor said we couldn’t paint our cabinets because we had chosen to rent the house and that painting them would not be the best choice. And the cabinets are only 10 years old, so they were not worth replacing , cheap though they may be.

Since we chose to rent out our house, we wanted to be realistic about a few things. The house is probably not going to be returned to us in better shape than we handed it over. (Although I do love the actual tenants, so maybe?) But also, there is a limit to how much we can earn each month from the house, so investing in to a new kitchen would be pointless, (at least until we decide to sell – and I doubt we will do it then either).

Once, I accepted the fact that our kitchen was going to stay this color, I had to decide what small changes we could make to improve the look of the space and ideas to update oak kitchen cabinets. Besides a few of the things I showed you that we did just to live in the space, I also tiled the back splash including a half wall as an accent for more interest and lastly adding some architectural character to the existing cabinets. I found out that I can, in fact, update a kitchen without painting the oak cabinets! Take a look at what we were able to accomplish:

In addition to the items mentioned above, here are few other things that I did to make the kitchen look a little better in itself and in our space.

1. Added some hardware (I went for the color black to match the grout and appliances)

2. Add orange to the living room. This was a HAPPY accident. We received our new family room rug the same day that we had the carpets cleaned, so while waiting for the carpets to dry, I rolled it out in our living room. All of a sudden the tile in the kitchen was not as offensive, because it matched something else… WOW!

3. Use a complimentary color to help the orange pop. This was not that much of a stretch since turquoise and blue are a main color way in the last home, but bringing that color into the kitchen really helped the orange look nicer.

Okay, so what, can it be a good “before and after” with out a hideous “before”? Okay, this is not super hideous (although you need to see how truly disgusting it was…)

Before:

During:

Cleaning up the mess after buying our house:

Small repair and updates over time (before the actual makeover):

Installing a subway tile back splash (and tutorial):

Updating the Cabinets Tutorial (without painting of course):

After:

Well, what do you think? It is a much better space if you ask me! I love the ideas to update oak kitchen cabinets that we came up with! And I think when and if we update, when we are ready to sell, we might try staining the cabinets a dark chocolate to match the living room floors, or just go ahead and paint them, but for now we are happy with the changes we made…

FYI, here is a link to when we were building the columns in case you want to see how we did it.

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