So, if you are like me...you look for any way possible to save money when venturing into a new house project. I seriously have the MOST expensive taste EVER. Every time my eye gets drawn to something it is completely out of budget and not even attainable.
When I finally decided to pull the trigger and start remodeling my 1970's kitchen, I went back and forth between a full gut, cheaper cabinets vs more expensive ones...the list goes on and on. The problem with a full gut kitchen renovation is not only the enormous price difference in budget, but also the scope of the project increases and so does the timeline to completion.....forget that! so I opted to go somewhere in the middle. Custom cabinets were NEVER an option and I'm ok with that. Since the standard kitchen cabinets were never going to fit the space perfectly, we had to come up with some creative ways to make it look like we had a more custom kitchen without blowing the budget!
Here is what the kitchen looked like when I purchased it almost three years ago.
To save money and time, I decided to keep the existing cabinets, added plywood trim to make them look like shaker doors and painted them. We relocated the refrigerator the opposite wall and added new cabinets to both walls to make a galley kitchen instead of the existing one wall apartment like set up which was terrible for cooking even the simplest meals!
I was desperate for counter space in this kitchen so I wanted to form an L-shape return where the refrigerator was in the original layout. Although the cabinet space is not ideal since it is a blind corner, I gained a ton of counter space and that's what a master chef like myself needs (hahahahaha). No, seriously, anyone who uses their oven and has more than one cookie sheet needs counter space! this is not a luxury...it is a must.
So, the off the shelf cabinets that we purchased ended about 5" before the wall. I was not ok with this so I sweetly convinced my boyfriend to build me a sweet little end cap bookcase to make it look more finished.
We were able to use finished pine boards, a nail gun and wood glue to make the custom bookcase end cabinet to complete the custom look.
Assembled the frame and then the shelves.
Mounted the bookshelf into place
Glued the shaker style trim to finish it off
To be honest, I was not sure how it was going to look. I was happily surprised with the results and it was very easy to do! In fact, the very next week I made an exact replica of this and hung it on the wall for an additional open storage cabinet. If I can handle this project, anyone could.
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