Kitchen Revamp with Pops of Lime

Lime green always reminds me of spring. To me, it symbolizes rebirth and renewal and I really wanted to use it to add some fun accessories and color to our newly renovated kitchen.

Before the revamp our roundhouse was tiny, 30 square meters or 322.92 square feet with one bedroom, a full bathroom, and an open plan kitchen lounge area. The kitchen cupboards and floor were dark and dingy and made the kitchen area look even smaller than it actually was.

Sorry about the picture quality 🙁 but you get the point, not nice. The bottom kitchen cabinets were badly water damaged in some places. I would have loved to save them, and some money, it just wasn’t feasible so we had to rip them out. The bits and pieces that we could save we kept for other projects around the house.

That floor also had to go, unfortunately. Every time someone walked in the door, I’d find myself sweeping to try to get rid of dusty footprints. This is our holiday home for goodness sake!! Funny thing, when you start ripping things out you just can’t stop, so we took everything out and started again.

The kitchen units are gone and the tiles are out and it already looks lighter 🙂 To make the room look larger, we decided to stay with a neutral color palette of white, grey, and black. We replaced the bottom kitchen cupboards with plain white melamine units, which we covered with textured wallpaper. It was the most cost-effective way for us to create the look we were going for. We also found some antique looking door handles at a flea market, which we sprayed white and distressed lightly with sandpaper to match the wallpaper on the doors.

We used Airodex Feather Finish on the counter tops. I was amazed at how easy it was to apply, almost like icing a cake and the color and finish is beautiful.  The counter tops were sealed with a food safe, hard wearing sealer.

One of the best decisions we made was to replace the top kitchen cabinets with rubber-coated open shelves. Yup, rubber-coated, the same stuff they use to line the back of pick-up trucks. Just measure and cut the shelves using whatever wood you have lying around and then either paint them yourself with a rubber paint or send them in to be rubberized. They are so easy to clean, look amazing, and should last us lifetime down at the coast.

I love the texture and the look of these shelves. Here’s a close-up view and it fits perfectly with the white, grey, and black color scheme. What do you think?

We added some lime green accessories, like these silicone egg cups and a small clock.

And this plastic jug and matching wine glasses.

For extra storage, we added some crates which we painted in an olive-grey color to store important documents and other bits and bobs.

And if we couldn’t find the right accessories we made our own.

We made the kitchen blinds using 4 dishtowels sewn together and I painted two large pictures to hang on the walls. (If you’ve seen our hanging dining room you might remember the painting of the cups). Hubby made a kitchen towel rack from a piece of driftwood and some pretty doorknobs we had lying around.

Gorgeous hey? Mother Nature also helps out by giving us these Granny Smith apples and tangy, fresh limes. We found an old plant pot, which we use to hold all our cooking utensils, and the Dinner Choices sign is so appropriate for a holiday home don’t you think?

We also found these hanging planters in the garden section of our local hardware, which we hung up above the sink to free up some very valuable counter space. We use them to store all our washing up bits and pieces, and the color was just right for our Lime popping kitchen.

All in all, I’m really happy with how our kitchen turned out, especially when I compare the before and after. The revamp cost us just under R 10 000 (that’s about $500 in today’s exchange rate) so it wasn’t as costly as we thought it would be. It definitely helps if you try to do as much as possible yourself.

I’d love to hear what you think. Do the Pops of Lime work for you?

Oh before I forget, if you don’t want to go to all that trouble and find some of the materials we used, we’ve got you covered Disclosure: Clicking on the links below, means we may receive a commission from Amazon. But don’t worry it won’t come out of your pocket, and it helps us come up with more crafty ideas to share with you 😉