Looking for kitchen makeover ideas? Remodeling the kitchen takes a lot of planning! When we moved into this house 6 years ago, I knew that the kitchen was going to need some serious amounts of work.
The house was built in the early ’80s and while it has some nice features, those are slightly overshadowed by the horrendous wallpaper, laminate countertops, and teeny tiny cabinets.
I love to cook and a significant portion of my day is spent in the kitchen so I want to make sure it looks good and that it is easy to work in. Designing my dream kitchen takes a lot of time!
Posts feature partner companies & may be sponsored. Post contains affiliate links & I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Table of Contents
Kitchen Makeover Tips
What makes my dream kitchen ‘user-friendly’? Here are a few tips on kitchen remodeling that you may want to keep in mind:
1. Easy of cleaning:
Carpeting does not belong in kitchens! While wood floors are nice, they require a bit of care to keep them looking shiny. I really like the look of natural tiles and you can clean up spills with little to no work at all.
2. Storage space:
This is a huge issue in my kitchen! I have teeny tiny cabinets that have very little room in them. Roomy cabinets are on my must-have list. Ones that go all the way to the ceiling to store tall items like vases or other oddly shaped items.
I want a pantry that will hold every single spice bottle I bring home without having them topple over constantly!
✯Don’t want to miss the next post?✯ Follow Turning the Clock Back on Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest Or join the private Facebook group for simple tips on going green! 
3. Choose your colors wisely:
While I like neutral colors in most areas of the house, for my kitchen I want bold and bright. Currently, I have light beige laminate countertops and every single stain shows up on them requiring occasional cleaning with bleach to get them out.
I HATE bleach but unless I want counter tops with red wine stains I don’t have much choice. I am considering a countertop sealer until we can put together enough money to redo the entire kitchen.
4. Natural Lighting:
We have a bay window in the kitchen which gives off lots of natural lighting. I would like to take down one section of the wall and open the kitchen up to the rest of the house but I have to check and see if it is a load-bearing wall. I love the open floorplan concept but not sure if it will be possible or not.
5. Energy efficiency:
When we redo the kitchen we will buy a few new appliances and make sure they are Energy Star certified. I want to get rid of the horrid fluorescent lighting and find something that will allow me to direct light to the places I need it most and not try to light up the entire kitchen.
Do you have any other kitchen makeover ideas? If you have recently remodeled your kitchen did you pay someone to do it or attempt it on your own? Want to design a sustainable home? Check out my post on green home improvements to make this year.
Diane is a professional blogger and nationally certified pharmacy technician at Good Pill Pharmacy. She earned her BS in Microbiology at the University of New Hampshire and has worked in cancer research, academics, and biotechnology. Concern over the growing incidence of human disease and the birth of her children led her to begin living a more natural life. She quickly realized that the information she was learning along the way could be beneficial to many others and started blogging and freelance writing to share this knowledge with others. Learn more about her HERE.
We remodeled our kitchen a few years ago, and used a lot of these ideas. We opened up the kitchen by knocking down a wall, and we used slate tiel for the floor. The counter top is dark and the cabinets are lighter. We have 4 windows to let in lots of light, too. Best of all, we added a mudroom and pantry area where the boiler room used to be and included a door going outside to a deck which is great for when we entertain, and also gave me a ton of storage for things like crock pots, vases, pitchers, etc.
I don’t own my home so I have no reason to read posts like this. I like them anyway
I had my kitchen completely redone. I did some of the work myself and had some of it professionally done-like the rewiring and building the cabinets. I have two suggestions for you:
1) Don’t go with wood floors. They are lovely but require constant upkeep.
2) If you are having your cabinets built to your specifications-have them put the date they will be done in writing. We didn’t. They promised they would be done by a certain date so we removed our cabinets, etc. Six weeks later, after not having a kitchen, our cabinets were done.
Great tips!! Our Kitchen is in need of a major remodel!!
We added a backsplash behind our counters and my husband did a good job. We are thinking of redoing the sink fixtures and lighting.
My kitchen needs a great makeover, our house is 50 some yrs old and needs some great decor.
Thanks for the tips.
Great tips! I want to make my cabinets more efficient in our kitchen – if I ever renovate it will be to add more specific functions to them.
I’m planing on remodeling our kitchen so found this helpful.
It’s important to take your time and plan ahead when undergoing a kitchen remodel. Don’t choose anything that’s too “trendy” since you may not like it within a few years. A kitchen remodel is costly and takes time but is always worth it in the end. You spend so much time in the kitchen, you should enjoy it!
A kitchen remodel is our next project! We’re doing it ourselves, which has the upside of being a million times cheaper and the downside of taking a million times longer. We haven’t started the kitchen in earnest yet (Still working on other renovation projects in the rest of the house), but you will appreciate the fact that we made shelving for the kitchen last week out of repurposed wood. 🙂