DIYer Tobias Gelbert’s (@herrgelbert) kitchen makeover bears a strong resemblance (hello, cane cabinet doors and jewel-toned green), but is a more renter-friendly version.
“I wanted a brand-new kitchen, but that quickly shot up to nearly €20,000 — way too much, especially since it’s a rental apartment,” Tobias says. “So I came up with the idea to simply paint the cabinet fronts.” His kitchen makeover cost €300, or about $346 USD.
Bright green paint breathes life into the kitchen.
The kitchen cabinets didn’t necessarily look bad before, but they were about 20 years old and the white paint was chipping off. Overall, Tobias says the kitchen felt “old, dull, and a bit grimy” until “the idea to give it a fresh coat of paint came up.”
It was actually easy to remove the old cabinet paint with heat because it was peeling off anyway. (Tobias used a hair dryer, but you could also use a heat gun.)
“The most important step, of course, was thoroughly cleaning the cabinet fronts at the very beginning,” he says. “I kept it super simple and left all the products and everything inside the kitchen cabinets — no need to empty them out.”