HOME IMPROVEMENT: Deep Blue Sea (Complete Kitchen Makeover with Paint)
- Here’s what it looks like now after a fresh paint transformation:
- How to Paint Your Kitchen Floor:
- Read More about the Rowhouse Remodeling Work-Trade Project!
When you have a *very* limited budget, a bucket of paint is one of the best tools in your toolkit.
Let me show you a kitchen story of a complete transformation on an Oops! paint budget… it’s a kitchen paint makeover that turned an uninhabitable space into something livable in a short period of time.
Remember this room in the rowhouse? (CW: Horrorshow before photos- that’s not yellow and black vintage tile, by the way, or I would have cleaned and embraced it- it’s pressboard meant to look like tile and it’s very stained and worn and smelly and already partially painted over)
It was even worse than this in-progress before shot shows, with a drop ceiling PAINTED BLACK, a ceiling-fan with an inch or so of caked on GRUNGE, greasy bug-nest builder-grade crumbling cardboard and MDF cabinets, and never-will-be-clean-again scuffed up, stained, torn skanky linoleum? Yeah, it was bad. Really, really, horror-film set ready, BAD. It also had had a horrible pest problem for years that wasn’t dealt with. I won’t describe the smell but if you know, you know. I’ll spare the rest of you.
Here’s what it looks like now after a fresh paint transformation:
Amazing what a little paint and a lot of elbow grease will do! I ripped out the gross vinyl roll floor that was damaged beyond salvaging. Then I painted the plywood subfloor with floor paint to get a fresh start for this low-budget remodel. The owners will probably put in tile or vinyl flooring at some point but it was in no one’s budget right now. We were just trying to make this a bright, clean, livable space with this kitchen paint makeover.
How to Paint Your Kitchen Floor:
- Prepare the surface… this could be easy or very difficult, if the previous floor covering was glued down and still in sound condition, you may want to paint over it rather than trying to remove it and all the adhesive. Beware of asbestos tiles- that is a job for a professional remediation crew.
- We checked that the subfloor was in good condition before removing the vinyl- it was! We scored the sheet vinyl with an exacto knife to make removing it easier.
- Create a smooth base- we filled the gaps in the subfloor with wood putty. Don’t use joint compound. You can sand for a perfectly smooth surface. We didn’t.
- Use a good quality primer to seal the pores of the plywood and any stains or knots that might bleed through, and prepare the floor surface for paint.
- Use a good quality paint designed for floors. Porch paint (without texture additives) is a good choice for this high traffic area that will be exposed to moisture. Two coats are best, especially for bold colors. Three is even better (make sure to allow for proper drying time between coats).
- Seal the floor with water-based semi-gloss polyurethane to make the surface easier to clean, more stain-resistant, and longer lasting.
We need to get a plumber in here to hopefully move the sink to where the work table is (and the table next to the stove where the sink is). Then definitely swap out the current sink base and cabinet (the same crumbling pressboard that the cabinets are, but with more moisture damage, going straight to the garbage) for the commercial stainless three-basin sink being stored in the basement (LOVE a three-basin sink).
Then we can frame out that wall behind the stove (where the exposed brick is… it’s not nice enough to leave exposed, but we had to get rid of the crumbling water-damaged plaster from the shoddy porch addition that had been funneling water down that wall, from before that was removed). But first the electrician needs to rough in a conduit run to the basement for future wiring, and THEN this kitchen will be supper-club ready!
Read More about the Rowhouse Remodeling Work-Trade Project!