If you are planning on changing the cabinets, Bunnings has these free Kaboodle booklets that you can design your kitchen with. It has a grid and all the different sized cabinets, drawers and appliances as stickers. It’s great to play around with the layout.

Set a budget and stick with it. So important when money is tight

Work out costs carefully. Set your budget a bit higher then you need and stick to your budget

Drawers, drawers and more drawers !!!! Drawers work so much better for storing everything. Make sure you have some deep ones for taller saucepans/pots.
Put in more power points than you think you’ll need.
Buy the better appliances if you want them – you’ll probably only do the kitchen once.
Save money and do the tiling yourself, it’s really not that hard.
Enjoy 🙂

We’re halfway through ours and my best advice is just go one step at a time. Lists are fantastic. Every time you think of something else that needs to be done (and there are a million things that need to be done) write it down. And allow about four times longer for things to be done than you expect because tradies never show up when they say they will!

Some more great ideas popping up that I’d never thought of myself!

Just some thoughts on layout if you have the choice – things like not placing the fridge next to an oven (since you will make both work harder), keeping fridge out of any direct sunlight (again makes it work harder if always hot), think whether you want garbage bins and composting etc. in a cupboard or have space for a separate bin floating about somewhere, the ‘island’ worktop is meant to be great (but have never tried it) and you can save lots of space by hanging pots and pans instead of filling up a cupboard.

Most people know about Ikea and kitchen renos but Bunnings also have a FREE service where they can draw up plans for you and help you plan a kitchen. Their cupboard range isn’t as vast as Ikea but they have some great options and some of their bench tops look great. Of course, it’s helpful that they also have a range of sinks and tapware as well, so you could do it as a one stop shop.

We only bought our house 7 months ago and it has an original 80’s kitchen, brown cupboards, orange bench top and dark brown tiles. We painted straight away! Tile paint is fantastic, they looked new when we were finished with them. The bench copped a painting as well with laminate paint and it really freshened the area up until we can afford to rip it out and get a new one in.