before-and-after: how to redo kitchen floors on a budget

Boring white floors get a major transformation.

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before: boring white floors

Being a first time home owner is extremely rewarding, yet there’s nothing like the challenges you’ll face once you become a homeowner. My husband and I bought our first home last spring, just a few weeks before we had our first baby.  It was a stressful time, but I was excited to turn our home into a place that represented our personalities, as fast as possible! It took me a while, but what I didn’t realize right away was just how much time and energy (and money!) this would take.

My husband and I are both financial accountants. We typically approach financial decisions with a very pragmatic mind. In this situation, we knew the transformation of our home would take time, patience, and most of all, strict budgeting.

Phase 1 of the renovation began by turning our
living space into an open-concept space by removing
a load bearing wall so the living and dining spaces
flow as one.  Phase 1 also included remodeling our
outdated and dingy kitchen.   It was so exciting to see
our home transform before our eyes! I mean, our kitchen is beautiful! It was so validating to see my kitchen design transform from dream to reality. I have since been itching to make more moves on the rest of the house, but I must do as accountants do and budget accordingly!
We’ve been saving up for Phase 2: new flooring.  It seriously can’t happen fast enough. We’ve been living with a renovated kitchen and unfinished flooring for the last 4 months, and as much as I clean and sweep and tidy up, it feels like nothing can get clean enough!  I realized the depressing state of our floors was weighing heavily on me, and I had to do something in the interim. The sub-floor had to go!

My solution? Paint! I decided to paint our floors a glossy white. I rummaged through my stash of paints, grabbed a brush and some painters tape and went to town. Sometimes patience isn’t enough to get you from point A to B, and in my case, from Phase 1 to Phase 2.  Painting our sub-floor white brightened up our dining space and punctuated the new design elements in our home. Although our home is far from finished, I feel the newly painted white flooring actually
creates a space that feels like our home.