I enjoyed the article, Decorate on Your Kitchen on a Dime.

My in-laws have painted glass doors on old cabinets for the stain glass look. It was a success as it looks great.

I was especially interested in the floor ideas. I painted the old wooden cabinets and they look fine, but the floor is wearing pretty badly and I need to do something about it. Kathleen Wilson always has good ideas!  

When I was a teen, my Father bought a secondary home for a camp to park his boat. The floors were painted. That looked ok but I think someone with a little more creativity and effort could have made that work out a little better. I always wondered what it would have looked like stained instead.

I've painted wooden floors with good luck and did an antique effect on another, by painting with white paint, then wiping it off and sealing it. It looked pretty good but didn't last as well as I'd hoped. I like the leather look idea, but don't think it would go in my kitchen. I think the stone idea she has would be nice, but it may look weird unless it could be textured somehow.  Maybe I'll take some time (next year!) and experiment with some ideas. 

When we first bought our present home, it had the old Youngstown steel cabinets in the kitchen.  They were in great condition (these were considered the best cabinets years ago) but awful dreary.  I painted them a rich cream color and cut narrow borders from the wallpaper I had used in the rest of the kitchen and dining room.  I applied it like a picture frame to each cabinet face, mitering the corners.  It looked very professional, if I do say so myself, and coordinated everything together.  You can do a lot with paint and paper!  Liz

I have wonderful for kitchen when we moved here there were metal cabinets I hated them and some had painted

a checker board on the floor ..

now it nice but I hate the color of the tile on my floor it is cold and I dont like the color .

Do you all think it would look weird to have the same kind of tile on the counter tops and the floor? We are going to be tiling our countertops and we want to replace the linoleum flooring with ceramic tile.  I found a beautiful neutral color (some swirly beige number at home depot) and wasn't sure if it would look bad to put the tile on the floor and the counters.  I am going to be sanding down the cabinets and putting a darker stain on them because right now, they are stained some kind of orangey brown that really doesn't do anything for the wood or the room in general.

jeweledsunshine:

Do you all think it would look weird to have the same kind of tile on the counter tops and the floor?

The same in-laws that painted their glass cabinet doors to look like stained glass also used the same tiles on their counters and floors. I think what they did looks good as they chose a pattern and color that worked well for that. I have seen some tiles that wouldn't work at all this way but a neutral toned ceramic tile should be one of those that is interchangeable for counter and floor and should look well put together in a kitchen.

Another frugal kitchen decorating idea: bead board. This stuff runs about $20 or less a sheet from Lowes (not sure how big, exactly, but big). They usually have several different design options, most being kind of plain so that they match whatever is already in your kitchen. It's a cheap, easy and fast way to spruce up the wall space behind your stove and/or the walls in the kitchen.

PS. We rent a small trailer/mobile home from friends. Our rent is dirt cheap for our area so we do updates here and there to make sure we are doing our part to keep up the place. The kitchen is the part I hate the most: cheap plywood cabinets that are almost un-updatable are an eye-sore.

Have a blessed day!

Julie

juju_mommy:

cheap plywood cabinets that are almost un-updatable are an eye-sore.

We bought a small mobile home when we married that had hideous cabinets that were dirty. We ripped them out and Dad built our replacement using a better quality of wood.