A Peeling Laminate Kitchen Gets a $675 Paint Makeover (It’s So Charming!)
If you need a new kitchen — and fast — paint is probably the best option for making a big difference quickly, and for not much money. When Claire Champion (@charnwoodtowers) inherited this property from her mother-in-law, it “needed a full cosmetic renovation,” she says, and she wanted to transform the kitchen before renting it out to tenants. But it’s not her main home, so there wasn’t a lot of extra budget to spend.
Claire made the transformation happen for about $675, which is impressive given that the cracked and broken laminate cabinets, the grungy tiles, and the dated brown countertops all changed.
The cabinets got a paint makeover.
The biggest game changer was painting the cabinets. The frames were in sturdy shape, but the laminate coating had to go, and it was Claire’s (a seasoned DIYer’s) first time removing laminate. “It was surprisingly easy,” she says. “I would definitely recommend having a heat gun and scraper.” She used the heat gun to loosen the laminate from the edges of the fronts and then peeled the laminate from the doors and drawers.
After that, she painted the cabinets in an off-white (Rust-Oleum’s Oyster) and sage-meets-seafoam green (Rust-Oleum’s Bramwell), “with a light color for the top cupboards to open up the space and a darker color at the bottom for practicality,” she adds. “The walls and ceiling were drenched in the same color as the top cupboards to help create a sense of space.”
The tiles look new — but they’re not.
The gray and white mottled tile backsplash in the kitchen was “in good condition but dated the scheme,” so Claire also gave those a paint refresh. She used two coats of a matte tile paint in Rust-Oleum’s Longsands.
Claire’s paints were gifted to her by the brand, but she says for someone replicating this sans-sponshorship, paint would still be a budget-friendly way to go, as that accounted for about $160 of the approximately $675 total.
Goodbye, dated brown counters.
“Painting all the surfaces ourselves meant we had budget available for new worktops, sink, and appliances,” Claire says. There’s new hardware (cabinet handles and a faucet), a laminate wood countertop, and a white resin sink.
“I’m delighted with the results,” she says. She adds that the space looks “brand-new, without the effort and expense of installing a new kitchen.”
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