Kitchen Cabinet Upgrades On a Budget for a Fresh New Look

Cabinets and cupboards are a lot more than just storage space for your kitchen. They are what accentuates your kitchen’s style and design. Even though they’re essentially nothing more than wooden boxes with doors attached to the walls, cabinets can absolutely make or break the kitchen. 

On the topic of making your kitchen unique and breaking away from traditional designs, there are a lot of great DIY projects to help you upgrade your kitchen cabinets and cupboards if they’re feeling a little dated. With some very practical, budget-friendly, and most of all very rewarding DIY kitchen cabinet hacks you can achieve fresh new cabinets that look better and more expensive in as soon as one weekend. 

New Paint Makes a New Kitchen

Repainting your kitchen cabinets is one of the simplest, yet most effective ways to upgrade kitchen cabinets and bring a new style and design into the entire kitchen. Perhaps the old paint has begun to peel off after years of wear and tear. Or maybe due to a series of “happy” accidents, many of the cabinet doors have scratches and chips on them. It could also be that you are just tired of looking at the same old cabinets and want a change of scenery. 

Before

Our good friend Rudd had the same idea when he repainted his wooden shelves in the image above. “At a high level, there was nothing wrong with the existing cabinets, but more as a matter of preference, we didn’t like the natural wood color they used to be.” Your cabinets don’t need to be in a beaten-up shape to deserve a fresh coat of paint. It’s all a matter of preference and what colors you’d prefer to see in the kitchen.

After

The transformation can be surprisingly significant. The new white kitchen cabinets perfectly complement the rest of the interior, almost like inserting the very last piece of a puzzle and watching it slide into place effortlessly. We haven’t even mentioned the most exciting part about this little upgrade. “The cost to replace the cabinets with new ones would have been roughly 3 times the cost of what we did, which was: paint them.” 

If your cabinets also have plenty of repair work cut out for them you can always find a carpenter on Contractors.com and have them build you an entirely new cabinet set for your kitchen. But if you just want a change on the surface level then painting kitchen cabinets yourself is a significantly more cost-effective way to go.

Options for Facelifting Your Kitchen Cabinet

While repainting your cupboards is a great way to breathe new life into the kitchen, sometimes you need to get in a little deeper to get the job done. A kitchen cabinet makeover can only go so far to refurbish old cupboards and cabinets. Resurfacing is a great way to give your cabinets and overall kitchen an update. 

Options for Face-lifting Your Kitchen Cabinet

The Secret Is In the Material and Texture

Refacing involves covering your existing cabinet frames with a layer of rood or laminate veneer. The average cost of a kitchen cabinet refacing project starts around $1,000. Depending on the finish of your cabinet you may need to reface your cabinets in one of the following ways. Some cupboards are painted over the material itself. To make things easier, however, many pieces of furniture, including cabinets, are covered in veneer. This is a material similar to wallpaper, with an adhesive on one side which you can stick to any furniture surface. If the veneer of your cabinets has worn out, simply peel it off, sand the wood below it, and apply the new veneer onto it. 

The Importance In Material Choice for Your Kitchen Cabinets

Out With the Old

If your cabinet doors or sides are damaged, they will be much easier to replace as opposed to being repaired. While you can find very strong wood glue for less than $10, sticking loose bits and pieces of the cabinet is not a long-lasting solution, especially if you’re planning on putting some weight in there. Instead, to be on the safe side, simply replace the bigger pieces which are damaged. The average cost of replacing kitchen cabinet doors and drawer surfaces ranges from $2,000 to $7,000, depending on the materials chosen and the surface area you have to work with.

As with repainting, a great way to update your kitchen without having to put a lot of time and resources into the project is to refurbish kitchen cabinets. It’s a very satisfying home improvement project to do and will give the inner handyperson in you a little challenge to tackle. 

Sliding Drawers That Make Life Easier

Putting sliding shelves in the cabinets is a very self-explanatory upgrade to your kitchen, yet so many of us choose to keep the inside of our cabinets the way they are. But the fact of the matter is that these sliding shelves give us so much more convenience. Trying to reach the deep corners of your cabinet can be a real hassle at times. After all, none of us like having to bend over backward and strain a neck muscle twisting for a rarely used pot.

A Simple Way to Revolutionize Your Kitchen Cabinets

Sliding or pull-out shelves are a practical solution to this problem. While this DIY upgrade to your cabinets is going to be slightly harder to pull off than the others on this list so far, it’s still a very useful feature to install. Well-organized wooden pull-shelves can also help bring some ergonomics into your kitchen, allowing you to be kind to your body and get rid of the clutter traditional cabinets are often plagued with.

Kitchen Upgrades To Make Your Life Easier

You can purchase pull-out shelves for around $50 on online marketplaces. However, the cost will vary depending on its size, the complexity of its gliding mechanism, as well as if it comes with railings, baskets, or any other special compartments for pots and pans. But once installed, you will be impressed with how much easier your life becomes and how much prettier your kitchen looks when cabinet doors left ajar. 

When Life Closes One Door, You Can Remove the Other

Part of what makes kitchen design, as well as design altogether, is that heterogeneity is unique and desired. Sure, there is going to be some amount of consistency, whether it is in the shape of the cupboards, their color, the handles they use, and so on. But there are ways you can change things up to not make them look so uniform and identical.

All you have to do is remove a few of the cabinet doors.

Simple Kitchen Cabinet Upgrades You Don't Need A Contractor For

This is another great solution for kitchen cabinet doors that require a bit more repair than others. This will provide a fresh new design for your cabinet layout and add variety to the room. 

Way To Give Your Kitchen Cabinets a Makeover

The “how to” of this DIY project speaks for itself, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy. Before you remove any doors, you may first want to consider exactly which cabinets or cupboards you wish to leave open, as stacks of plates and cups are sometimes best left hidden. However, even a single open cupboard can really freshen up the look of your kitchen with style.

Handling Your Kitchen Properly

Looking at a cabinet you usually see two of the following things: a door and a handle. While the handle may seem very small in comparison to the door and especially the entirety of the cabinet collective, it is a very important element of your kitchen’s design that can inconspicuously change everything.

Replacing kitchen cabinet handles is a very easy project to do, as the only tool you need is a screwdriver. As for the prices of handles, they vary from design to marketplace. You can find plenty of your desired styles going around for very accessible prices. 

How Cabinet Handles Will Completely Change Your Kitchen

These rustic, classical handles go for around $30 and usually come in a pack of 5. The handles are fastened to Hampton-style cabinets and drawers, which offer a more relaxing, almost coastal aesthetics. They can also go perfectly with most classical or rustic interiors thanks to their ornate design.

Small Changes for Big Upgrades for Your Kitchen

Rectangular, metallic, matte, or brass handles are perfect if you want to go more in the direction of chic modernity. If you’re looking for something more simple, but super sleek, these are still the perfect pick for the minimalist kitchen. Much like their rustic counterparts, these are also quite budget-friendly.