Rent House Kitchen Before & After

Here are the before and after pictures of all the work we did at the rent house kitchen.

You can read all about our landlord woes here.

We started to overhaul the kitchen after we finished one of the rent house bathrooms.

The kitchen was one room that the renters hadn't really destroyed too much and so Caleb and I hadn't planned on doing much more than cleaning it in preparation for selling the house.

All of that changed a few days after we evicted the renters.

The house is way way way out in the country and so the house runs on well water which is powered by electricity (all of this is new to me...I've always been a city dweller lol). So Caleb called the power company to tell them that he wanted them to turn the power on ON FRIDAY of that week. He specifically told them DO NOT TURN IT ON BEFORE THEN since he wanted to be there when they did, so that he could make sure the renters hadn't left faucets on or anything.

Well could they follow this simple request?

NO!

So they turned the water on sometime early THURSDAY.

And yes, the renters had left the kitchen faucet on and an outdoor faucet on the side of the house.

Thankfully, the Lord directed Caleb and me to go out to the house on Thursday evening (we weren't planning to go out until the next morning which was Caleb's day off of work). We pull up and get out of the car and I said "umm...Caleb I hear running water...".

We walked into a flooded kitchen. The water was even running into the living room and down the hall into the bathroom.

Water was everywhere. Everywhere.

And the faucet outside was flooding the underside of the house.

It was such an overwhelming mess.

Since the kitchen faucet was running over with water it ruined the laminate counter tops and the inside bases of the cabinets (thankfully the majority of the cabinets were fine). The flooring and subflooring were an awful mess too and the water leaked under the flooring and subflooring and tore all the insulation out from under the house and also the air conditioner duct work, as well.

Caleb filed a complaint that day with the electric company who went back and listened to the recorded conversation where Caleb DID tell them not to turn it on until Friday of that week.

We're still waiting on them to reimburse of for the damage. This is a huge out of pocket expense for us, but the Lord is mercifully providing in the meantime.

Ok...enough disaster stories.

Here's how we made over the rent house kitchen on a very tight budget.

We calculated our costs and we only spent $520 on the kitchen (we did all the work ourselves).

We spent that on:

countertops

pulls & knobs

cabinet paint

wall paint

primer

light fixture

brushes, rollers, & painter's tape

floor primer

flooring

glass for 3 cabinet doors

blinds for the kitchen window

Before shots of the kitchen from a few years ago.

The camera chip I used to take pictures of the flood and renter damage broke before I could save the pictures, but the kitchen  mostly looked the same.

Lots of dated apple wallpaper, maple cabinets, grayish tan counters, and sheet linoleum flooring.

We ordered the new counter tops from Lowe's in a faux granite pattern. They look really pretty!

I just wanted the kitchen to have a nice clean generic look since we're putting it on the market.

Sanding, priming, and painting all the cabinets was very time consuming, but worth it!

A picture of the new laminate "stone" tile floors. I think we paid .78sqft for them at Lowe's.

Since Caleb had to take up the sheet linoleum from the water damage that meant that we had to lay down the new laminate over plywood. We asked the man at Lowe's if we had to prime the floor first and he told us to use a special floor primer. It worked really well and helped smooth the rough plywood so that the tiles would adhere. The primer was only $10 and we were able to use some in the master bathroom, as well.

There was a really strange early 90's track light over the sink and it just had to go. We found this pretty pendant lamp on clearance at Lowe's for $12 (marked down from $36).

Thankfully, the sink and faucet were in good condition and we didn't have to replace them.

So, for $520 plus a million-billion hours of

labor we got the kitchen ready for what will Lord willing be a fast sell.