Budget Kitchen Redo - Part I

All I wanted to do was hang a shelf!!!

I'm a sensible woman.  Well, at least I'm trying to be!  As an interior designer, I know how costly a kitchen reno is and my home being 200 years old guarantees that hidden issues will surface and the costs will escalate.

The cabinetry is circa 1985.  While most of the rooms in this house have been gutted and rebuilt over the years I've owned it, the kitchen still has old drywall over lathe and plaster.

I accepted that I could not get into this kind of major project but what harm can there be in removing an old, hideous, useless microwave shelf? ~

Face it, putting some cookbooks and mason jars up there isn't doing anything to pretty this up!  Even Maeve's kitty butt can't help with pretty here!  She liked the shelf as a perch to watch me wash dishes.

Off comes the shelf and I stare in horror at this! ~

 This is bad.  This is really bad!  Sooo - I figure I'll put on my pro decorator hat and a pair of work gloves and lets see how cheaply I can spruce this kitchen up.  I've hit blogs and Pinterest for ideas and techniques and I'm sharing this makeover in the hopes that you'll get some ideas for your own projects.  I'm keeping careful track of the costs and I think I'll come in under $200.

Of course, busting out the plaster and fixing the cracks and holes was the first order of business.

I picked up this shelf at a yard sale for $1.  Someone had stripped it and found it wasn't worth refinishing.  I wanted a place to display vintage tea tins that belonged to my Grandmother. ~

I painted swipes of different shades of blue on it and added a crackle medium before putting a final coat of Benjamin Moore 2108-50 Silver Fox.  That's the colour I am painting all the oak veneer cupboards.  I added some numbers in a cobalt blue craft paint and three, hand forged, antique hooks that I bought at a flea market for $4 each.  ~

The hooks display a little collection of vintage cream pitchers. ~

Now, hanging that shelf was another whole ballgame!  This house was built by a pioneer, in between pulling stumps and ploughing fields with a horse.  Nothing is standard and I couldn't find a stud to anchor the shelf.  My brother in law came to help and he brought some self drilling anchors and spent a good hour trying to get the shelf up.  I kept saying, "All I wanted was a shelf!  Can it really turn into such a big deal?".  He was saying ummm - nothing.

So two weeks into the shelf fiasco, it's finally hung.  The doors are removed from the cupboard above and the oak trim painted in the Silver Fox.  I'll leave this as an open cupboard and next post I'll show you how I dressed up the interior. ~  

Wanna see the before again? ~

And the after! ~

I'm putting a lot of man (okay, woman) hours into this kitchen but I'm actually having a ton of fun with sticking with my Thrift, Gift, Reworked & Found goal!  

Wait until you see how I reworked the hardware! 

I'm sharing this with Saturday Nite Special