Simple & Beautiful Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover | 5 Lessons I Learned

Creating a charming cottage kitchen doesn’t have to be expensive. Today, I’m sharing our simple budget cottage kitchen makeover and DIYs that helped save money.

I always feel like when we finish a room makeover, it always ends with a DIY post.

The girls’ bedroom makeover and our fireplace makeover are examples that come to mind.

Honestly, it makes sense to end a makeover series with a DIY.

But in real life, when we finish a space, I don’t walk my friends and family into the room and start blabbing about the DIY that finalized the project.

I take them on a mini tour.

Sharing the ups and downs, the laughs, and the lessons of the entire project.

I promise I will share the range vent DIY post eventually.

But for now, I would like to take you on a tour of our cottage-style kitchen renovation now that it’s finally done!

So grab a cup of tea or coffee and get cozy.

Let me take you on the budget cottage kitchen ideas tour over coffee HERE

3 Ways We Saved Money During Our Cottage Kitchen Renovation

Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover | Go slow!

Sometimes I get frustrated with how long a project like our budget cottage kitchen makeover takes.

But then, when I sit back and consider it, there are a lot of benefits to a project that is progressing slowly.

One of those positives is that it can save us money.

The obvious way this helps cut costs is because we make fewer mistakes.

Don’t confuse “fewer” with “none” because we make plenty.

But by going slow, we can make sure we don’t rush and make mistakes.

Another way we save money is by adjusting the plan.

As the project evolves and we live with it and make realizations about the different decisions, we can adjust the plan.

After we made some of the changes, we discovered we didn’t need to invest money or time into some of the other projects we originally thought we would do.

This is also an example of good project management.

Ex: I thought about building a dish rack for more storage space in our small kitchen.

But we added the shelves and peg rail first.

We lived with it and discovered that we didn’t NEED a dish rack.

If we had built the dish rack before we finished the shelves, we would have spent time and money on the dish rack without taking the time to learn if we needed it.

Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover | Timeless vs Trendy

This feels like an age-old battle.

I recently listened to a podcast on Simple Farmhouse Life, and this conflicting thought struck me.

Which is good.

Sitting in our own echo chambers listening to only things that we like to hear, is bad for us.

Lisa and her guest were talking about home design and how we “all” generally want something timeless.

Something that we will never have to change.

Her guest then said something to the effect of “But the truth is, as humans, we get bored and like to make changes.”

It’s this part that has been bothering me.

Both-And

Something that my husband and I pride ourselves on, and probably to a fault, is “overly researching” topics.

Instead of making an educated decision and moving forward, we analyze it forward, backward, left, and right.

This is also why projects take us so long, you guys haha!

The upside to this is that when we finally act on a decision we’ve made, we are usually happy with it.

We will even say something like, “That took us a while, but we’ll love it forever and never change it.”

We just said this about our new range vent cover!

So, to listen to this podcast days later, it kinda hit me hard.

What I’ve landed on is this: I will do my best to choose fairly timeless big-ticket items, and I’ll extend myself the freedom to experiment with little and budget-friendly things.

By keeping the big ticket items timeless, it costs less because you won’t feel like you have to change them.

But this approach does allow you to experiment and play with different styles and trends for some fun.

Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover | DIY vs Hire

Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover: We Hired Out

This is something that my husband and I go back and forth on.

For us, we talk about this topic with all the different parts of our home makeovers.

For instance, when we first moved in, the kitchen had a cooktop over a three-drawer cabinet with no oven.

The previous owners were Amish, and their oven was a cookstove in the dining room.

Coincidentally, we had bought a gas range a couple of months before we moved, but didn’t install it.

So we moved it to our new house.

My husband and I removed the 3-drawer cabinet ourselves, but we hired a plumber to run the gas line.

Can my husband do this DIY?

Yes, he can.

But when we evaluated the cost of my husband doing it himself with the tools he would need to purchase and such it was a better option to hire this job out.

Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover: We Did Ourselves

The contrast to this story is when we decided to put a quartz backsplash behind the range.

We asked how much it would cost for them to install it, which was double the cost of the quartz piece itself.

After doing research and talking to the guys about the process, we decided it would be doable for us.

It was heavy, but not hard.

And we didn’t have to purchase any tools or equipment to complete the DIY.

So we did that ourselves and saved $ 100s.

That is one of the biggest benefits of being a DIY family.

Another example of this is the range vent cover we just finished.

From all the other DIY projects that we’ve completed over the years, the only thing we bought to add this cottage-style vent cover was the vent itself and drywall corner bead.

My husband likes to keep things, and I like to get rid of EVERYTHING.

So he was really excited to let me know that he made my dreams come true by keeping miscellaneous pieces from other projects haha!

This isn’t something we did overnight.

It’s been a journey.

One project and then another.

But over the years, we have accumulated different tools and supplies that help with other projects, and this helps cut the costs.

Our Budget Cottage Kitchen Makeover And The Journey

Today, I wanted to share the final reveal of our cottage kitchen makeover with you, and I also wanted to talk about what lessons I learned that I will take with me for our next makeover.

Design Slow: It Can Be A Good Thing

This is a big lesson I am taking with me from our budget cottage kitchen makeover.

We’ve always moved slower than I wanted to, and I’ve always viewed it as a negative.

Something we needed to improve upon.

But now that the kitchen is done and I’m reflecting on the process, I can see how going slow helped us a lot.

If I had jumped right into this project and plowed ahead with the original plan, the cabinets wouldn’t be this beautiful blue, and there wouldn’t be a gorgeous quartz backsplash behind the oven.

Some of my favorite design features of our kitchen.

Design Around What You Already Have

This saves time AND money.

I realize that you don’t want to do this with everything, otherwise, you wouldn’t be considering a kitchen makeover.

But with our kitchen, there were a few elements that we were able to incorporate into the new design that made the makeover less involved.

Blue Cabinets

We painted the cabinets at our old house.

It’s not the most difficult DIY that we have ever finished, but it’s certainly not my favorite DIY.

By finding a way to incorporate the color of the cabinets with the European cottage style that I like so much, I was able to reduced the amount of work and money we had to spend.

Butcher Block Counters

Butcher block counters are a great fit for a European cottage-style kitchen.

My husband has wanted butcher block counters for quite some time.

But I was always afraid to do it because of the work involved in them.

When we moved in, this kitchen had butcher block counters.

After living with them for a few months, I realized they aren’t as scary as I thought.

Do they require upkeep?

Yes.

But the cool thing is I can always refresh the counters if they get stained by strawberries.

Not that I have lived this exact situation or anything haha!

Design Around Functionality First and Foremost

If you’ve been following along with me for very long, then you are probably well aware that I love simple and functional style.

I want things to make sense and have a purpose.

Not all, but most of the items in my kitchen serve a purpose that is more important than how pretty they are.

Shelves and Peg Rail

The shelves and peg rail are a perfect example of this.

We needed storage in this kitchen after I removed the industrial pipe shelves from the wall.

When I did that, we had to decide if we were going to install 2 shelves on all the walls like they had or see if we could get away with less.

For style, I wanted fewer shelves.

At the old house we had 2 shelves on each wall and it felt so busy and cluttered.

But I didn’t want to make life harder for myself by reducing the storage space.

Ultimately, we decided to go with 1 shelf on either side of the oven.

But in the back of my mind, I knew that we could add more if this wasn’t enough.

By going slow, I learned that two shelves provided more than ample storage space, combined with the other kitchen storage solutions I utilize.

Design with DIY in Mind

I know I mentioned this earlier when I talked about saving money, but this isn’t the only benefit to doing DIY projects.

I know that DIY projects can feel overwhelming.

But that first DIY project prepares you for the next, and so on.

So, after 12 years of doing DIY home projects, you have enough tools and experience to tackle larger projects with confidence.

Other than the cost savings, the thing I love most about DIY projects is the ability to change my mind.

Quartz Backsplash

The original plan was to have a beadboard backsplash for the entire wall behind the oven.

But when we realized that a metal backsplash for the oven was going to be WAY more expensive than we thought, we changed course.

We found a piece of remnant quartz counter and had them cut it to the size we needed and installed it behind the oven for half the price of the metal backsplash.

But to do this, we had to cut out the beadboard behind the oven.

Yes, if you’re thinking we should have checked into the prices and nailed those down before we installed the beadboard backsplash, you’re right.

But we’re humans working full-time jobs elsewhere, homeschooling kids, and caring for animals on our farm.

So we made a mistake in that assumption.

But by learning DIY skills, we were able to change course, and it was a very minor inconvenience.

Build Mock Ups or Demo’s to Get a Visual

This is something I learned during the final stage of our budget cottage kitchen makeover.

My husband and I were in a disagreement about the size we should make the range vent cover.

Not a huge disagreement, but enough that we didn’t want to start cutting material.

To ease my fears about how big this was going to be, my husband grabbed some cardboard and cut it to the size he wanted the range vent cover to be.

(He was thinking about function and I was thinking about design – we make a good team haha!)

So, by building me a cardboard mock range vent cover the size he wanted, I was able to visualize the size in real life.

This helped me A LOT!

(You can see his cardboard range vent during our budget cottage kitchen makeover in the YouTube video.)

Instantly, I was ready to keep moving with the project without fear of it being too big for our tiny kitchen.

Another example of this is a gallery wall.

I’ve seen people cut out paper the size of all the frames and use painter’s tape to lay them out on the wall.

If you watched my mini living room makeover, then you know that for that project, I didn’t do this.

But I’m pretty sure I’m going to start doing it now.

I hope that the lessons I learned during our budget cottage kitchen makeover have helped you as you think about your next home project.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

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Have a great week! XoXo

Open Your Doors,
Aliya

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