Earlier I shared about how we did a little mini-makeover on our kitchen pot lights. Since we don’t have the budget right now to do the entire kitchen, we decided to break this one up and do it this way for awhile until we’re ready to replace the cabinets and counter-tops (and maybe add on a bigger dining room…??)

I wanted to share another quick way we made a pretty big change in there for a fraction of the cost of what the entire cabinet budget would be–the hardware.

Now, before I catch myself and refer to this as a “cheap” change, let me warn you by saying that those little metal knobs and pulls cost way more than you’d think they should. Of course, there are various price points, and I’ll just say that we stayed on the lower end of those by visiting a store that specializes in this kind of material (not Home Depot or Lowes), and buying one of the cheapest options they had in the color and type we wanted.

In fact, the place we ended up buying our pulls, Locks and Pulls, was a candy-store for this sort of thing. We got there right as they were closing so we hurried to make our selection, but I found myself wanting to stay and wander around the store, dreaming about all the ways to use their awesome selection.

Even though we were doing this for mostly aesthetics, ultimately, we decided that price was the main factor we would consider. As long as we got the brushed nickel and something that fit well in our hands and didn’t look awful, we wanted to keep this project as economical as possible. The knobs we found right away and then selected a matching pull, but they only had a few and it would take too long to order them in (we needed these before our Housewarming party), so we choose a similar backup.

In the end, we love what we picked out and were excited to get them all installed.

See the damaged wood on our cabinets? That’s why replacing them is in the Master Plan. Still, the knob is nice, right?

I could do most of these by myself, and I intended to do that, but Hubs ended up helping quite a bit because he was way faster at it than I was. He probably made me go paint trim or something in the mean time. (Just kidding. Maybe.)

Here’s the comparison shot of the old and new. Big difference, no?

Even with buying hardware that cost only a few dollars each (as opposed to more than $15 each–it’s crazy what’s out there!), the knobs and pulls alone cost more than $100, so we decided to try our hand at spray painting the hinges like we did for the door project.

You can read that post for more information on how we spray painted the metal hinges, but ultimately, we just laid them out and Hubs gave them several coats of Rust-oleum Metallic matte nickel spray paint.

Here’s how they looked before (yucky tarnished brass):

And during (sorry for the grainy picture, it’s dark in our garage at night!):

And how the kitchen looked during…yes, it was chaotic and messy and awful and yes, we may have eaten soup or grilled cheese every night for a week…or something like that…

And after, all put back together, finally!

In the end, we think this project was totally worth it, especially because we don’t plan to do the kitchen this year either (maybe next year!) and needed a quick way to make us not feel so grumpy about the icky old brass and ivory handles in the meantime. And who knows–maybe when we replace the cabinets, we’ll like these knobs so much we take them off here and reuse them with the new kitchen?

Tell me about your mini-makeovers–what’s the best way to score big impact for a not-so-big budget?