If you’re like me, your kitchen is probably where you spend the majority of your time while you’re at home. Whether it’s cooking dinner, baking chocolate chip cookies, serving up hand-crafted lattes, or doing the dishes– to me, the kitchen is the heart of my home. When we bought our house last year, we knew right away that the kitchen would have to be completely redone. It felt dark and cramped, the countertop was falling apart, and there was a serious lack of storage space. With this in mind, we factored the estimated cost of the remodel into our offer on the house, setting aside a portion of our savings strictly for the kitchen.

The first step for me was doing research, aka spending several hours scouring Pinterest for inspiration. A word of caution: be wary of the Pinterest Trap. There are so many beautiful and perfect images on there, but not a lot of those ideals are realistic for two twenty-four year-olds who just bought their first house. I quickly realized that I couldn’t copy the picture of a perfect dream kitchen, but instead I could use it as a good starting place. I found my central “inspiration pin” and used it as a basis for the color scheme and “vibe” I wanted.

When we met with our first designer, one of the first things she said was, “Just so you guys know what you’re getting into, the average cost of a kitchen remodel is $30,000 to $50,000.” It took every ounce of self-control I had to stop “oh honey, no” from coming out of my mouth. We knew that we could pull off a budget-friendly kitchen remodel if we were willing to put in a little more work.

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