Updating a boring or tired kitchen doesn't have to mean spending hundreds for new accessories. A quick look around your kitchen can reveal inspiration for a whole new look. It's all about repurposing, redoing, and using what you have to get a kitchen that looks like brand new.
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. Get your daily serving of fruits and your decorating fix. An interesting bowl filled with lemons, oranges, limes, apples or other fruit is a decor statement and encouragement to add more fruit to your diet.
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. Update furniture with a coat of paint. Can't afford to replace your random assortment of dining chairs? Like the style but not the finish of a chest of drawers, hutch or other piece of furniture? You'd be surprised what paint can do! A traditional or country style piece can become mod when painted a bright, unexpected color. Mismatched furniture pieces are unified and look purposefully mismatched when painted the same color.
3. Make storage a statement.
Everyone can use more storage, so using items you already have as storage pieces makes a decor statement that kills the proverbial two birds with one stone. A collection of baskets on top of cabinets or even suspended from the ceiling can store extra towels, paper plates and plastic silverware. Vintage canisters are often useless for kitchen staples, but work great for recipes, packets of drink mixes, and other small odds and ends -- a collection of interesting tins will serve the same purpose.
4. Free up cabinet space by using your kitchenware for decor.
Since we're on the subject of storage, here's another great idea for kitchens: instead of hiding your pretty mixing bowls, great looking glassware and copper pots in the cabinets, use them to decorate your kitchen. Display a set of matching mixing bowls on top of cabinets or on a shelf. Attach a stemware rack underneath your cabinets, and hang your attractive stemware. Hang copper pots from the wall or ceiling. Even dishtowels
5. Create wall art with plates.
If you've amassed a collection interesting but mismatched plates on your way to responsible adulthood, you have the ingredients for a unique kitchen wall decor arrangement. Just pop the plates into plate hangers (available at home improvement stores), and create the arrangement you like best. Need a few more plates? Yard sales and thrift stores are a great resource for dishware on the cheap.
Tip: In order to save yourself time and your walls from various nail holes, work your plate arrangement out on a large piece of paper first, tracing a circle around the plates when you've worked out the arrangement you like best. Then, turn your plates over, lay the paper on top, and punch a hole in the paper corresponding with the plate hangers. Tape the paper to the wall, insert nails or push pins into the holes, and you're ready to hang plates.
6. Turn cheap glass vases, jars and bottles into works of art.
No home is without a few clear glass vases, jars and bottles lurking unused in cabinets and closets. Turn them into decor pieces you'll be proud to display by painting them. Create "milk glass" by pouring white (or any color you like) acrylic craft paint down the insides of vases and jars. Working over a tray to catch drips, pour paint down the inside walls of the jar or vase and turn to coat, adding more paint as needed. After the vase or jar is completely coated, turn it upside down to let the excess paint drain. Set vessels upside down on the tray to dry; every 30 minutes, lift and wipe up excess paint, repeating until no paint remains. Set upright, and allow to dry 24 hours.
7. Repurpose kitchen linens into decor pieces. Those embroidered napkins you got as a wedding gift, the funky dishtowels you found at a thrift store, and the apron you love but never wear all have something in common -- they'll make great decor additions to your kitchen. Use clip rings to hang napkins or dishtowels from a cafe rod to make a casual window treatment. Attach decorative hooks from the back of a door or a wall and hang linens and aprons.
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