A $1,000 Kitchen Makeover Majorly Improves This Small NYC Galley Kitchen
Because rent prices fluctuate so much, it’s not uncommon for renters in New York City to move around a lot. Renter Lindsey Kephart (@lkephart), for example, has lived in three boroughs and five apartments in her 12 years of living in the city. When she moved into her most recent place, in Queens, she found herself with a 65-square-foot galley-style kitchen that needed a little facelift.
“I think in an effort to ease into a new place, I had to try to make it feel comfortable and welcoming,” Lindsey says. “It feels like a cozy getaway from the frequent chaos of everyday city life.” Here’s how she created her charming kitchen within a $1,000 budget.
She swapped yellow and gray for green.
When Lindsey first moved in, the kitchen cabinets were bright yellow, painted by the previous tenants, friends of Lindsey’s. “In the morning when the sun hit the paint and tin, it was more of a jolt than an espresso, and certainly more color than I had anticipated,” Lindsey says. She prefers earthier, more subtle colors, so she went with a tan for the walls and forest green for the cabinets.
“I love neutrals mixed with a limited palette of jewel tones, oak, mahogany, and ash, and handmade pottery,” Lindsey says of her overall style. She chose Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee for the walls and Caldwell Green for the cabinets.
The floors were a labor of love.
Lindsey says she had to break up the sanding and painting of the cabinets into sections to make progress and stay focused, and she also had to practice patience with the flooring, which also required sanding and painting. The floors were actually her first project in the kitchen makeover.
“The floors had tiling removed and were stained in a way to make them appear antique or reclaimed,” she explains. “It took weeks of using a hand sander to remove as much of the previous stain as possible … I think next time I would rent an industrial sander so I would be done same-day.”
Lindsey stenciled a checkerboard look over top and created “a bit of a beach vibe, mixed with a Parisian sensibility, with a Scandinavian hygge vibe, and maybe country farmhouse,” in the kitchen. (For more completely eclectic kitchens, check out these 16 kitchens that combine styles.)
The runner over top of the new checkered floors is from Loloi.
A new backsplash and accessories complete the kitchen.
Lindsey added hardware from Rejuvenation — it will be switched out for the originals when she leaves, she says — pottery and stoneware from Etsy, and decor from Goodwill to complete the look.
One change she regrets not making sooner was replacing the tin backsplash with the new ceramic white tiles. “The tile may be the quickest of the projects,” she says. Down the line, she might want to add a combo washer-dryer to one of the cabinet spaces, “but that would be ambitious,” she says. Still, when it comes to DIY projects, she says, “the juice is worth the squeeze.”
Of her overall project, she says: “The paint was the least expensive update and probably would have been sufficient, but I was committed to the vision … The kitchen is a great starting point and I can’t wait to keep incorporating similar colors into the remainder of the apartment.” Here’s to making changes — big or small — to your rental to make it feel like home, no matter how long you’ll be there.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.