Dear Brenda: If I didn’t know better I would suspect that you had MY kitchen! We bought a home that was built in the 1920’s and when the inevitable “remodel” happened the owners were able to turn the closet sized kitchen into something a bit larger, but it still had all the “old kitchen” problems that you mention above.

Like you, a complete redo was not in the cards, so we started looking at things that could be done inexpensively. Paint and wallpaper are the obvious first places to go, and even though our kitchen was painted white, it still had a dark, dingy feel to it. The previous owners had installed white tile with a red border and I was able to find a wallpaper that was primarily white with tiny, random, irregular red dots that picks up the tile trim and adds just a bit of flash to the walls without darkening them.

If your floor is nasty (and ours was) take a peek underneath to see what those layers of vinyl flooring might be covering. An old fir floor, sanded and sealed is beautiful, and if you do it yourself, very inexpensive. Another advantage to working with what is already there is that you won’t have to replace it again when the inevitable moving of cabinets and/or knocking out of walls happens in the future.

All of our kitchen cabinets were those same flat surface laminates that were so popular at one time. Rather than doing anything drastic with them (they are white and add much needed light to the room), I splurged on really cool, handpainted porcelain knobs and drawer pulls for EVERYTHING. They added terrific visual interest and helped me incorporate come color into the red/white scheme I inherited. This was a few years ago before there were so many wonderful and inexpensive options available at the home improvement stores. Now I go in and look at all those choices and wonder where I can find cabinets and drawers to use some of them on!

Other easy and cost effective options are to add molding to the cabinet faces, then re-paint, giving them some architectural interest. Another option (one that we are thinking of using in our Paper Room at the shop) is to frame some fabulous handmade paper inside the molding.

Speaking of handmade paper, another thought. If you have been cursed with “daylight ceiling” panels, you can remove the plastic panel, and apply a transparent handmade paper to the panel. This will still allow light to come through but depending on the papers you choose you can add color, textural interest, etc.

Lighting, of course, must first of all be functional, but also make it fun, it will help you ignore some of the other aspects of your kitchen that you don’t like. There was track lighting over our eating area, which was cold and impersonal. We bought a large “ship’s lantern” type light fixture, lowered it over the area to make it seem more intimate, and even though it does not illuminate the room as efficiently as the track lighting did, it still adds a warmth to the room that was missing before.

My last bit of advice is to accessorize the room the same as you would any other room in the house. For some reason kitchens still seem to be relegated to only having cooking/food related items in them. I have a few favorite watercolors, a pair of antique ice skates, a porcelain duck head water spout and a menu (well, ok, that’s food related) from a favorite restaurant in the Philippines hung on the walls. It makes the room seem more like, well, a room!