When my husband and I bought our first home, there were numerous renovations and updates that I wanted to do to the house. More than I could afford, to be honest. After picking my Uncle’s brain (he’s a carpenter) on what updates he thought we should do, he gave me some of the best advice. He said, “Kella, live in it for a year and see if you want to still do these renovations after that”. So, I took his advice and waited on major updates for our kitchen.
Don’t get me wrong, our kitchen has good bones. The cabinets were white (what I wanted), it has beautiful wood trim and wood floors, working white appliances and it has a homemade wine glass rack hanging from the ceiling (we get so many compliments on it). But, the biggest eye sore for me were the counter tops. I absolutely hated them. I mean, they were outdated, some were cracked, the grout was non-existent in some areas and they were discolored. But again, I gave it a year to live with before I made the decision to replace them.
In the meantime, we did make some minor updates to our kitchen (since, I couldn’t knock down walls and get my dream kitchen) to make it look more up-to-date and more of our style:
- Painted the walls and cabinets
- Updated the sink and faucet
- Changed out the wall plugs with new white faces
- Painted the ceiling
These cosmetic updates gave my kitchen the facelift it needed, so I was thrilled. But, I still found the countertops atrocious and hard to clean. So, after a year and a half of living with them, I convinced my husband that they needed to be replaced. Plus, Lowes was having a fabulous deal.
I will never regret investing the money into these countertops. They changed our entire kitchen for the better, and complimented the updates we had already done. We did not go with the most expensive tops, but we also didn’t go with the cheapest. In the end, it did not break our bank and I’m so happy on how it all came together.
Therefore, my advice to new home owners is that you should make those cheaper cosmetic updates where you want them (trust me, they all add up), but live with the more expensive ones until you’re 100% positive you want them. Sometimes you’ll find that area you wanted to update in your house isn’t so bad after all. Or, like in the case of my countertops, you’ll find that they definitely need to be updated.
Michella Hand 