I want to talk about the cost of remodeling a kitchen. Let me warn you – it isn’t cheap! To save money, we had our hands in nearly every project – even the ones we paid other people to complete. Today I am going to tell you how much we paid for various projects in our kitchen and also share some ways we lowered the prices.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we ordered new shaker style doors for our dated kitchen cabinets. This was an economical way to update our kitchen, without the expense of brand new cabinetry. We ordered the doors from a local, family owned wood shop. To replace all 15 doors, it cost us $1,153. That averages out to about $77 per door. Not too bad. We also opted to pay an extra $195 to have them drill for and provide hidden soft close hinges. To save money, I painted all of the new cabinet doors, and my handy dandy husband installed them.
Next on the list is flooring. As I mentioned in several posts, we struggled with the floor because of our original asbestos tiles. We ended up going with a sheet vinyl, but it is seriously the most stylish flooring in our house. It mimics the trendy cement tiles I see popping up everywhere, but without the expense and maintenance. We paid $1,357 to have the floor professionally installed. To save cash, John and I prepped the subfloor ourselves. We removed the existing tiles, applied a chemical adhesive remover to scrap up the old glue, and then sanded off any leftover adhesive. It was labor intensive and unpleasant, but worth it to save money and get the results we wanted.
Our tile backsplash was another project we hired out. We found the installer on our town’s Facebook page. He gave us a quote of $1,000 to remove our existing tile, repair the any damaged drywall, and install the new tile. We decided to remove the existing tile and repair the drywall by ourselves. The installer dropped his quote to $600, which was a much better price. He did a great job, and we love the way it turned out!
Finally, we paid to have granite countertops installed. We weren’t able to save much on this project, because we are not granite fabricators! Originally, we wanted quartz counters, but we were having trouble finding a color/pattern we liked. We ended up falling in love with a slab of granite called Viscount White. The granite was cheaper than the quartz, which saved us a significant chunk of change. We spent $2,121 on our new granite countertops, and we couldn’t be happier. They are perfect!
I know I sound like a broken record. I keep repeating that we LOVE the doors, LOVE the floor, LOVE the tile, LOVE the granite. But we really do. I think we love it even more because we put so much work into the space. I am so proud of what we have accomplished on our budget friendly kitchen remodel!