Budget Friendly Kitchen Cabinet Update Ideas

One way to give your kitchen a new look is to update your kitchen cabinets. While replacing your cabinets can blow a hole in your budget, there are less expensive ways to give kitchen cabinets a facelift. Here are 6 budget friendly kitchen cabinet update ideas.

Replace Door Panels. Glass-front cabinets are one of the most popular styles for today's kitchens. If you'd like to add this contemporary look to your kitchen and you have wooden cabinets, you may be able to replace some of the doors with new glass-front doors. Or, if you are handy with tools, you can easily (and much less expensively) do the job yourself. Just remove the cabinet doors, measure the panel size so that you can have glass precut to fit the space, cut out the center panels, and insert he glass in the openings. For more how-to tips on this process go to www.hgtv.com. While clear glass panels will let you show off your most beautiful china and glassware, you can also choose more decorative tinted or colored glass panels or, for a more dramatic look, consider stained glass or painted glass. Also, don't feel limited to replacing cabinet door panels with glass. Metal, tin or wire panels are other alternatives that can give your kitchen a modern, unique style all its own.

Create Some Open-Shelf Cabinet Space. Another popular way to display kitchen dishes and glassware is on open shelves. Open shelves are even easier to create than glass-front cabinets and even easier on your budget, since all you have to do is remove the cabinet doors and repair any holes where you removed the hinges. One way to really make this new look work in your kitchen is to be creative with the interior walls of your open-shelf cabinets. For example, paint them a white or neutral shade if you want to show off colored or patterned dishes to best effect, paint them a color that contrasts with or complements your kitchen cabinet exteriors if you want a more dramatic effect, or even wall paper them.

Add Trim. Another budget friendly way to update kitchen cabinets is to embellish them with trim. For example, you can add molding at the top of kitchen cabinets, especially if they go all the way to the ceiling, or outer trim around plain front doors to create an inner panel and a more finished look. Buy unfinished molding and paint or stain it to match or complement your cabinets.

Paint Cabinets. One of the most budget friendly kitchen cabinet updates is to paint them. While this is a time-consuming project, the rewards make it well worth the time and effort. You can keep the look simple and clean by painting your kitchen cabinets a solid color that coordinates with the room's walls and floors, or, for a more dramatic change, paint kitchen cabinet trim contrasting shades, paint one cabinet a different color from the rest so that it becomes a focal point of your kitchen, or paint wall cabinets a different color than floor cabinets. Another creative and fun option is to decorate some cabinet panels with stencils or even with wallpaper.

Replace Hardware. Adding new kitchen cabinet hardware is simple and you will get a lot of bang for the buck. Just replacing the existing hardware with the same style will make your kitchen look fresh and new, but, for the maximum transformation, choose a new hardware style and/or material.

Replace Doors. A more expensive kitchen update alternative (but far less expensive than replacing all your cabinetry) is to simply replace the cabinet doors.

Sources:

designsnitch.blogspot.com, design snitch: six ways to update your kitchen on a budget

Angela Tague, www.ehow.com, Best Way - Cheap Ways to Update Kitchen Cabinets/eHow.com