My Almost No Cost Kitchen BandAid Fix

The kitchen has been a major sore thumb in our house from the beginning.  Early on we made it functional- bought a refrigerator, bought a new stove that heats up, fixed the plumbing so it doesn't leak- you know the minor details...  We stumbled upon stainless steel replacement deals on a microwave and dishwasher.  Putting the microwave over the stove really helped us with some counter top space.  After that, it really wasn't a high priority, as we hoped to completely renovate the kitchen in the future.  The future however keeps being pushed further and further out for this sad little kitchen.  Not being able to take the horrible brown, falling apart kitchen any longer...I decided to put an inexpensive band-aid on it!  

Here are the before pictures!  The first one, you can actually see I was already in the process of patching the gaping hole in the ceiling.  One thing you can't see are the lovely details missing- trim pieces, doors that don't shut, missing cabinet parts, the finish so bad and old it's worn off in areas, the stickiness on the walls and cabinets...   The power of TSP solved the sticky issue while prepping the cabinets and walls amazingly well.  The rest was just a whole lot of elbow grease and paint!

Ah, here's a close up of where my favorite hole was.  Yeah, still not perfect, but like I said, we plan to totally gut and renovate hopefully in the next few years.

And now, ta da!  The finished product!  Total cost 1 gallon of paint for the walls and ceiling and 6 drawer pulls and about a week of nap and after bed time work and effort!  (The rest of the materials we had hanging around!) 

Brett and I had the same thought- the orchid really makes the whole makeover :-)  Thanks for re-blooming at the perfect time my lovely little orchid!

Oh and yes, now we see how awful the counter tops look...hoping to replace these with butcher block as a trial run for our future kitchen.