Necessity is the mother of invention
When we moved into our new old house nearly four months ago, we had big plans. We’d fence in the yard, buy some new furniture, remodel the kitchen. But complications with selling our Poca house and a few months of double mortgage payments have caused us to scratch fencing and furniture from our list (next to go—food), but redoing the kitchen just couldn’t wait. We needed more counter and storage space, and I was convinced I could do it for next to nothing.
Since our kitchen is primarily my husband’s domain, it couldn’t be girly.
“Keep it simple,” was Geoff’s only request, although he rejected my first simple plan. (Flat slab of rock. A few sharp knives. Open pit fire.)
I went back to the drawing board.
Our existing cabinets were dated and lacked the accoutrements new cabinets have, but they were sturdy and—most of all—paid for, so the cabinets would stay. We simply slapped on some paint, and it changed the feel of the room.
Since it would’ve been too expensive to replace the cabinet’s many old fake-copper knobs, handles and hinges, we opted for two cans of Rustoleum hammered metal spray paint (black for hinges, silver for handles). For $6 a can, the hardware looked new. Actually, better than new. The textured finish this spray paint produces is amazing, but it’s also addictive. We’ve now used it on all our cheap plastic switchplates and outlet covers, our heater vents, and several light fixtures.
So encouraged were we by our inexpensive remodeling job (about $50 for paint and spackle) that we ventured over to ReStore, the used and new building materials resale store across the street from Green’s Feed & Seed. (Proceeds from the store go to Habitat for Humanity.)
Hoping to find an affordable base cabinet at ReStore, we instead found a gorgeous old buffet the exact height, length and width that we needed. Just $70.
Once the buffet was in place, we re-used old wood shelving from the basement to build over-window shelves, and two long, wide shelves for dishes above the buffet. For about $150, our “new” kitchen was done.
When we began, we thought we were doing a temporary fix, something to hold us over for a few years, until the money fairy visits. (I’ve grown quite fond of some of my delusions.) But we’re both so pleased with the results that we’re going to keep the kitchen this way.
I doubt we would’ve experienced this same great sense of accomplishment had we done nothing but agree to a design and write a check. Having succeeded at being both creative and thrifty, we have a newfound confidence in our abilities that if we’d had more means, we might’ve missed.
When my grandparents married during the Great Depression, they started with nothing, but my PapPap, a tough, Polish mill worker, was such a capable man that he got them through. When he saw a stack of broken, discarded chairs outside a community center, he took home the parts and assembled them into perfectly good chairs. When something broke, he fixed it. If he couldn’t fix it, he found another use for it. Only when something was truly useless would he throw it away.
Years later, my grandparents would wash and reuse aluminum foil, rinse out plastic bags, save wrapping paper. Their generation didn’t just know how to make money talk, they could make money scream.
Later generations seemed to measure success not by how much they could reuse and save, but by how much they could waste.
We’ve had such a good time finding ways to reuse what we already have (or what’s already been used by someone else), that we’ve decided to make it our remodeling theme.
Something I expect would’ve made PapPap proud.
