Budget Farmhouse Kitchen Remodel (Under $1500)

This little kitchen in our old house in the country was my happy place for five years. Today I’m so excited to be sharing our $1500 mini budget farmhouse kitchen remodel! We were able to do a small kitchen remodel without spending a fortune, and the updates made our space a little more functional and a lot more appealing!

Update: Check out our NEW kitchen renovation!

It’s been a busy couple of years, apparently.

Because it’s only taken me almost five years to write this blog post. Hashtag winning. Well, we bought our house, a little Cape Cod in the country, all the way back in 2014. The house was built in the 40’s for the pastor of the church down the street. I loved that. We actually met a man who was married in our living room back in the 60’s!

The whole house had good bones, lots of space, a big yard, and storage galore. We fell in love, right away, but we knew we’d need to do a small kitchen remodel right away.

It was what we lovingly refer to as a hot mess.

Let’s just say it didn’t have mass appeal, because I personally think the lime green, almost florescent paint with white decals would’ve been better suited for a tropical beach house. Definitely not for a farm house on a country road. It also had peeling linoleum flooring and low end laminate countertops that were rotting from water exposure.

Side note: We ended up doing budget renovations on the bathrooms, too, but I’ll save that for another day.

Because the appliances were newer, those didn’t need replacing, and we could tell the space was usable. We could see past it all. That’s the cool thing about house shopping, because if you let the space speak to you and not the decor, then you might find a diamond in the rough!

Our first project: Budget Farmhouse Kitchen Remodel

So we jumped in and bought the house! It was exciting! We decided to tackle the kitchen first without spending a fortune, because we weren’t quite ready to invest in a large-scale renovation.

Instead, we made small, cost-effective updates, mostly by ourselves but with some serious help from skilled family members. The goal was to make it more enjoyable for our time here, but also to make it much more appealing to potential buyers. At that point, we were still planning for the possibility of selling the house in the next few years.

Oh, and here’s a shameless plug!

Be sure to check out some of my favorite healthy meals, invented right here in this kitchen!

• Orange Sesame Chicken & Broccoli (Whole30)
• Classic Pot Roast (Instant Pot, Whole30)
• Crunchy Broccoli & Bacon Salad (Whole30)

Before & After: The Budget Farmhouse Kitchen Remodel

Oh, how I loved this kitchen island from Rivet Design. While I was cooking or doing dishes, my boys would climb into their chairs. On cold mornings, I’d make them a cup of hot cocoa and they’d talk with me or draw pictures. Hang on, because I’m getting weepy now!

My husband was standing in front of this sink the moment I told him I was pregnant with our sweet baby boy. Uh-oh, here come more tears!

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What We Did

Oak Butcherblock Countertops

We got butcher block countertops from Lumber Liquidators on sale for $159 each, and we needed two. We used Boos oil and wax to seal them occasionally and had to be careful about leaving anything wet on the counters. We had some leftover, so we repurposed the scraps for our custom kitchen island!
Total cost: $318

Range Hood

It was the cheapest one we could find that still looked nice, because under cabinet range hoods just don’t work that well, regardless of how expensive they are. We got this range hood at Home Depot.
Total cost: $65

Mini Subway Tile Backsplash

We had thin set and grout from another project, so we only had to buy the tiles. We spent the weekend putting it up. It’s definitely not perfect!
Total cost: Just under $90

Farm Sink

We got it at IKEA! They’ve since replaced the one we bought with this sink, which is a little smaller but still super cute! We were able to re-use the existing faucet for a big savings!
Total cost: $298

Flooring

This sticky tile flooring was FREE, a gift from my brother in law. He had some leftover from a rental property, so he gave it to us to use. If we had bought it, it probably would’ve run about $95. If you use this, buy extra because they’d occasionally get damaged and would need to be replaced. They were so easy to install (it took us about 4 hours) and were simple to replace when we needed to.
Total cost: $0

Custom Kitchen Island with Shelving

This was the one item that took us over budget. We could’ve gone with a cheaper kitchen island, but we really wanted to have one that matched the kitchen and also made the best use of the space. We wanted to have comfortable seating for 2 while still having some space to use for prep and serving. It also has two huge shelves for storage.

The custom design from Rivet Design Co and was the deal of the century! Absolutely beautiful, 100% handcrafted, with a mix of reclaimed wood and leftover butcher block.
Total cost: $600

Paint:

I painted the kitchen a really pretty forest green when we first moved in, but quickly found that the room had much less natural light than I expected. It really needed a clean neutral color to brighten the space. We went with Woodlawn Colonial Grey!
Total cost: $45

Cabinet Hardware

We bought black cabinet hardware from Home Depot for about $1 (knobs) and $3 (drawer pulled) per piece. It was a 15 minute job and made a big difference!
Total cost: $19

Pot Rack

I bought a cheap Pot Rack on Overstock. It wasn’t as nice as the high end ones, but it certainly did the trick and gave us a little more space in the cabinets.
Total cost: $50

Did we stick to our budget?

Well, yes! The total cost of everything was $1485, and our total budget was $1500. It was worth every penny and more, because our kitchen is now super cute and much more functional.

Did we do everything we wanted in our small kitchen remodel?

No. A certain someone left the water on in the bathroom sink directly above the kitchen overnight (oh wait, it was me), so we had to deal with replacing a big portion of the ceiling in 2015. That was expensive and also just kind of annoying, and that meant that there were a few things on our small kitchen remodel list that we didn’t do:

• I wanted to relocate the outlet for the stove to behind the stove, because it always annoyed me. If you look carefully, you’ll see the stove is plugged in above the countertop. We never got around to doing that.
• I also wanted to change the light fixtures, but we just never got around to doing that. They weren’t that bad, but new ones would’ve been nice. Sometimes you just get used to what you have over time, and that’s perfectly okay!

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The updated photos of our small kitchen remodel are courtesy of Lynchburg’s Finest Real Estate Team. I highly recommend them as realtors!