A 1930s Kitchen Gets a $100 Renter-Friendly Makeover (It’s So Charming!)
Sometimes your first day in a rental can be jarring (think: cleaning the toilet for the first time, installing window units in a sweltering hot apartment, and getting a closer look at gross grout lines between tiles in the shower, kitchen, or floors.) But with some elbow grease, you can clean a rental no matter the condition it comes in — plus personalize it a bit to make it feel like home.
That’s what TikToker Rachel Connelly (@rach.connellyy) and her husband are doing in the 1930s rental house they recently moved into. When they moved in, the kitchen had laminate counters, a beige backsplash, and a “terrifying” yellowing caulk around the countertop edges. For under $100, some cabinet and countertop upgrades totally transformed the kitchen.
First, the cabinets got an upgrade.
“I wish I could paint the cabinets, but my landlord doesn’t allow me to do so,” Rachel says. Instead, she gave the glass fronts a patterned upgrade with privacy glass stickers. She also swapped out the old white cabinet knobs with brass ones she found on Facebook Marketplace.
The counters and backsplash were covered with peel-and-stick.
Rachel removed the “booger-looking” caulk (as she describes on TikTok) and added a wood grain peel-and-stick cover over the laminate countertop. “I feel like the biggest change was the countertop!” Rachel says. “It added so much more warmth to the kitchen!” She also added off-white peel-and-stick tiles for a more textured backsplash.
Rachel says she loves cooking, and she wanted the space to feel more welcoming — and she certainly achieved that. For more renter-friendly kitchen makeovers, check out this $250 transformation, this loft kitchen, and this colorful island upgrade.
Inspired? Submit your own project here.