Budget kitchen reno with Acacia benchtops

[islandgirl]

A bright new colour scheme and new tiles and shelves transformed this holiday house kitchen.

• The project
• Materials
• More inspiration for your kitchen

The project

Our little Western Red Cedar holiday house on the south coast of NSW was always going to be a challenge – and the tiny kitchen was the centre of it all. With eight mouths to feed we needed a functional kitchen ASAP.

This whole D.I.Y. Bunnings kitchen reno was done by my husband and myself in a week. We ripped out cabinets, sanded and whitewashed cupboard doors, replaced shelves and benches and tiled the floor and walls.

Demolition.

Acacia project panel benchtops on.

 

 

Backsplash tiled and floating shelves added. Nearly there.

We painted everything in Dulux Pure Brilliant White and used plenty of Selleys No More Gaps in the panelled ceiling. We used a Zinsser undercoat to stop the Western Red Cedar from bleeding through the paint – this process began a month before demolition.

We used an enamel on the whitewashed cupboards, then sanded them back and sprayed them with a protective coat of lacquer to make cleaning easy. 

It went from being dark and dingy to being a bright, clean, tropical oasis kitchen wth a little breakfast nook. We're very happy with the final results. 

Materials 

The materials and furnishings we used included:

• Benchtops: Acacia solid hardwood project panels
• Shelving: galvanised plumbing pipe and connectors with SpecRite timber panels
• Breakfast nook: Acacia solid hardwood project panel
• Tiles: Johnson Tiles' Cemento in matt finish for the floor and lappato finish for the splashback
• Plants: Bunnings garden centre 
• Sink and tap: Bunnings 
• Stools: Bunnings.

The total spend (not counting white goods) was just under $1300.

It was a pretty cheap and easy reno. If I had to do this again I definitely wouldn’t have painted the interior and exterior white. It took me seven months solo to prime and paint – not to mention all the No More Gaps on the old panels.

More inspiration for your kitchen

Experienced Bunnings Workshop contributor Adam_W has put together this handy guide to planning a kitchen renovation. There's also plenty of inspiration in our Top 10 most popular kitchen projects.

If you just need a quick kitchen refresh, check out our collection of 10 kitchens transformed with paint. You can begin transforming your own kitchen with our step-by-step video guides to painting kitchen cabinets and painting a tiled splashback.

Let us know if you need a hand with your kitchen project. We're here to help.

[Dave-1]

@islandgirl 

Nice modification! Love the Shelves with the steel waterpipe supports and also the side bench I like functional things and these def seem to be useful. The painting sounds like a pain, worth it but a pain My kitchen is even older (its particle board! So always looking for ways I could fix it up either short term or long term.

Thank you

Dave