A DIYer Put Her Own (Very Pink!) Spin on Her Grandma’s Kitchen — For $1,200
Some homes aren’t just structures to live in but are actually steeped in family history. Take hairstylist and DIY content creator Alisa Chavez’s (@diy.slut.alisa) home in Tempe, Arizona, for instance: It was built in 1958 and belonged to her grandmother.
“[My grandmother] was from the Depression era, so she was a saver and worked really hard to get this little house,” Alisa explains. “So I love this house. It’s more than a house for me. It’s a part of her. It’s small, but it still has so much life left.”
Even though Chavez’s home holds a lot of sentimental value, some areas needed a bit of love and a modern touch. For example, the kitchen lacked storage and a pantry, which made it less functional than she wanted. She also felt it needed some aesthetic upgrades.
“It was neutral and needed a good cleaning,” she says. “It’s a very small and narrow kitchen.”
“The kitchen was very bland and neglected,” Alisa shares, and she wanted to put her own, more colorful DIY spin on it.
Alisa pulled inspiration from Barbie’s Dream House and Scandinavian style for her kitchen makeover — she liked the idea of incorporating bright colors and unique shapes.
For starters, she gave the cabinets a dose of color. She painted over the original beige using Backdrop’s Barbie Dreamhouse Pink.
To add some dimension and help her glassware collection stand out through the cabinet’s glass doors, she added Spoonflower checkered peel-and-stick wallpaper to the back of the cupboards. And new heart-shaped knobs help the pink cabinets pop, too.
The walls also got a makeover. Chavez painted them white and covered the trim in the same bright pink as the cabinets.
The white subway tile peel-and-stick backsplash anchors the room while balancing the rest of the vibrant colors. Instead of replacing the floors, she used Rustoleum’s white tile paint kit and black grout marker to refresh that area.
One of the biggest challenges in Alisa’s kitchen was the lack of storage. To combat this, she added a base cabinet and two top cabinets from The Home Depot (and painted them pink, too!).
One of her favorite parts of the redo process was organizing her fruit-themed, colorful, mismatched dishes in her new cabinets.
“I feel like I’m in a completely different space,” she says of the pink-infused makeover. “It’s pretty but also functional. Mixing old with new … Cooking no longer gives me anxiety now that I have extra storage.”
Overall, she spent around $1,200 on the kitchen refresh, which only took two weeks to complete. The upgrade helps Chavez honor her grandmother, while making the home a space she can continue living in comfortably and stylishly.
This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: Before & After: A Grandma’s “Bland, Neglected” Kitchen Transforms Into a Dreamy Paradise (for Only $1,200!)