Don’t Ditch Your Old Kitchen Cabinets — Turn Them into a Breakfast Nook Like This TikToker Did

If you’re in the middle of a kitchen renovation and are about to toss your old kitchen cabinets into the dumpster, stop! You may just be able to reuse them to create a super-cozy space to enjoy your morning coffee. 

TikTok user Melissa Woods (@welcome2thewoods) shared how she took the upper kitchen cabinets in the lake house she’s renovating and turned them into a cute bench for the brand-new breakfast nook.

Woods posted a video to her TikTok on April 2 detailing the progress she has made on the lake house since she purchased it in 2022. She’s doing most of the major renovating herself, including installing faux wood beams onto the vaulted living room ceiling.

But the first room she tackled after purchasing the property was the kitchen, which she totally demolished and reconfigured.

“I actually refurbished all of the upper cabinets that were smaller into an L-shaped breakfast bench,” Woods said in the video. 

She took the shorter cabinets located above the large uppers, removed the decorative trim, sanded them down, and created a base for them to sit on. 

But with some measuring, precise cutting, and imagination, you could easily chop your full-size upper cabinets into a height that would work for a breakfast nook bench, too.

Woods even has a YouTube tutorial to better explain her process of turning her cabinets into a bench to help get your gears turning.

So before you get rid of those cabinets, consider turning them into something new and useful for your new space. You may have a hidden gem on your hands and you don’t even know it!