Let’s be honest, just about everyone has a wish list of changes they’d like to make to their home, just as soon as the time and money line up.
We all have projects that get pushed to the back burner — refinishing the cabinets, replacing the carpets, rewiring that off-kilter hall light — that we may have had since we moved in, but just don’t ever get done, because it’s hard to justify the expense.
It’s not that we don’t all want the ability to turn a run-down home into a spectacular and updated abode, as this clever renter did in just 30 days, but we don’t always have the means to do so.
That’s why it’s so refreshing to see a would-be renovator make a major update to her kitchen, for just $100!
In fact, she gave the whole space a facelift, for less than the cost of a pair of designer jeans. Check it out in the gallery below!
For Eliza Brooker, the mission to fix up her dreary kitchen began when her messy roommate finally moved out, leaving the kitchen wide open, and in dire need of a redo.
"This kitchen was so gross. It was yellow and sticky and sad and ALWAYS dirty," she wrote on her website, Best Friends Pizza Club. "I had a roommate who cooked like Jackson Pollock…so I knew anything I did to the kitchen would just be covered in beer and marinara sauce a week later."
It was enough to make her give up hope on having a shiny clean kitchen, until she finally got fed up with her messy roommate and asked her to leave.
Over the next two weeks, she set about totally revamping the kitchen from top to bottom.
We'll be the first to say it: The results are incredibly impressive.
Over the course of two weekends, and on a budget of just $100, she excised the messy, gross debris left behind by her roommate, and turned it into a lovely, airy space to gather with friends and family.
She started out with a deep cleaning of the space, which went much further than just wiping up her roomie's spaghetti splatters.
Over the course of two years living with her messy roomie and largely avoiding the kitchen, it had acquired an impressive coating of grease and dust.
She tackled the grime with organic cleaning products, the bugs (ew!) with diatomaceous earth, and then sanded down the cabinetry.
The deep clean was just the first step in her massive revamp of the space!
After she sanded down all the wooden surfaces, she had to clean up the formidable mixture of sawdust, regular dust, and cooking grease, but it was worth all the work.
With primer in place, she was able to repaint the cabinets a clean snowy white that better matched the appliances and countertops.
Meanwhile, she painted the walls a pretty pale turquoise. Together, the two colors create a light and cheerful vibe.
Finally, it was time to tackle that icky floor, covered in off-white tiles in an unfortunate pattern.
She didn't have the kind of budget for reflooring the space with hardwood, stone, or ceramic, but she does have an eye for good ways to fake the look on a budget.
She went to the hardware store and picked up some simple, stylish wood-look vinyl flooring from the Lowe's Style Selects line, at roughly $1/ square foot.
She measured and cut her vinyl precisely, and created a herring bone pattern stretching from wall to wall across the old tile.
Using cheap vinyl flooring, she was able to precisely re-create the beautiful look of antique parquet hardwood, at a tiny fraction of the cost.
She also attached new wooden baseboards to replace the leaking vinyl baseboards that were previously in place.
When all was said and done, she ended up with a truly gorgeous kitchen that looks nothing like what she first walked into.
Instead of her roommate's messy, greasy disaster zone, she has converted it into a clean spare room with style to spare.
Are you as in love with the finished product as we are? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to SHARE with friends who love to see a good remodel in action!
