Laura Heynike: Extend the life of your kitchen in 3 easy steps
Here are three band-aid approaches to freshening up your kitchen.
Quite often in our consults the kitchen is the centre topic. However, not everyone can afford a swanky brand new kitchen when there are other priorities in or outside the home that need investment in first.
So a band-aid approach is required to freshen up the space without taking too much budget away from other areas.
A lot can be achieved when you have clear expectations on the desired outcome and a realistic band-aid budget to match.
The most common refresh is getting your cabinets sprayed or repainted.
This is a great approach if your cabinetry hardware and cabinet edges are in good nick but the colour makes the whole space look outdated, especially if you have recently repainted the surrounding walls.
There are a bunch of companies that provide a respray service and it’s mostly hassle-free.
They generally take away as much as they can with a small amount of onsite spraying required. This is a great option if your benchtop is granite or you are still happy with the quality and look for another 5 years.
You may want to update your handles in this same exercise but try and pick ones the same size otherwise filling and patching the cabinets can be more costly.
The second refresh hack is the humble kitchen tap replacement.
This is a simple and cost effective fix that can transform your kitchen in an instant. It is a great way to get your kitchen up to current trend or to match other hardware in your home.
Go for a large goose neck or something sleek and minimalistic - whatever ties back with the style of your home. For $500 you can say goodbye to that wobbly faucet and hello to a fancy retractable tap.
Lastly it’s the reverse of the first one. If your cabinets are looking good and runners are working well on the drawers, but your old laminate benchtop isn’t up to standard, just replace the benchtop.
It is a tactile feature that when reselling your home, I can guarantee you it will be touched and make an impression.
So get it templated and for $5000 (depending on the size of your kitchen) upgrade it to a nice imported stone or engineered stone. While you are doing this exercise, you also have the opportunity to upgrade your sink which you can decide to be undercounted or over mounted.
Once you have it all fitted get a few tools and go around to all the cabinets and drawers and
For $500 you can say goodbye to that wobbly faucet and hello to a fancy retractable tap.
give them a tighten just to make them feel sturdy and visually fix levelling issues.
Realistically there are lots of small things that can be done, from upgrading the splashback to updating the powerpoints and light fittings.
It depends on how far you want to keep on going for maximum gain but you can stretch it a few more years until you are ready to commit to a full makeover.