Sometimes, you don’t need to tear down the entire house to give it a fresh start. Making the right adjustments can transform the space. That’s what Megan, 33, and Jeff Hamann, 34, a North Dakota-based couple, did. They transformed their gaudy kitchen into a warm, traditional farmhouse-style space, one step at a time.The kitchen was initially unliveable. The walls were red. Not a muted brick or a barn-door shade, but a loud, saturated red, finished off with swirl pendant lights in red and orange and brown laminate on the floors and counters.That was the kitchen Megan and Jeff Hamann inherited when they bought their Fargo home in 2019. Megan was still in grad school. The budget was thin. The room, though, couldn’t wait. The couple told Realtor.com that they renovated the kitchen in two phases over five years. They started with an under-$1,000 renovation, followed by a larger one.
The $800 makeover that made the kitchen liveable
Megan and Jeff wanted to make the gaudy kitchen liveable. They were on a budget, so they had to take things into their own hands. They spent about $800 on the basics. First, the red walls had to go. The walls went Agreeable Gray from Sherwin-Williams. Luxury vinyl plank flooring from Lumber Liquidators ran through the entire first floor. A concrete overlay covered the laminate counters, and Jeff installed a hexagonal backsplash picked up on an end-cap sale at Home Depot. They spent roughly $425 on paint, flooring, and lighting, plus $378 on the original backsplash, grout, and concrete countertops. That makes $803.Jeff is a project manager in construction development. He had no formal construction training, but he has worked in landscaping, flooring, roofing, siding, framing, and hardscaping. Most of the labour stayed in the family, from ripping out drywall to laying floors and tile. The couple had watched countless HGTV shows and had an idea of how to work around the house. In fact, the show itself inspired them to buy a fixer-upper. “At the end of 2019, after being inspired by countless HGTV shows, we decided it was time to take the plunge and bought our first ‘fixer-upper’. It’s been a whirlwind of learning, hard work, and countless projects ever since,” they said on their website.
Saving the cabinets
Renovations do not necessarily mean throwing away everything. The good things had to stay. For instance, Jeff wanted the cabinets to stay. They were natural wood. He loved the strong grain. Megan, 33, an occupational therapist, wanted the contrast, and she liked dark cabinets against a lighter countertop.When the red went away, the wood finally had room to breathe. “Sometimes you have to change everything around something,” Megan told Realtor.com.“We didn’t look at inspiration from Pinterest or other places,” she said. The couple already knew what they wanted.
Under-$10,000 renovation
The next step of the renovation was serious. They already had a laminate countertop, but Megan had always wanted stone. She set a $10,000 target, tracked it in an Excel sheet, and estimated that quartz alone would run $6,000 to $7,000. The money came from savings, content creation, brand collaborations, and affiliate-link commissions. Jeff’s side gig as a baseball umpire added to the pot. Everything was paid in cash. Megan said she was particular about that. “I am very into our finances. I don’t like going into debt for things. We have credit cards, but we pay them off every month. I know that if I don’t have the cash to pay the card off that month, then I really can’t afford the purchase,” she told the outlet.The second phase of the renovation took 10 weeks, and much of that was spent waiting for the countertops to arrive. They came from Northern Stone, a local company. The couple pulled samples, took them home, and asked their Instagram followers. The crowd and the couple agreed on Aspen by Vico Stone. But the new counters came with a problem. They sat flush to the wall, leaving a gap where the old concrete splash had been. The hexagon tile was discontinued, so the whole backsplash had to go. Megan skipped standard subway tile and chose a handcrafted option from Alexander James Tile Co., chosen for its texture and movement.The sink also became a negotiation. Megan wanted one big basin for cookie sheets. Jeff wanted two. They landed on a sink with a divider that stops short of the top, which gives two sides without losing wash space. A black Kraus faucet ties into the stainless-steel appliances.The kind of detailing the couple added to the kitchen is what stands out. The kitchen has 15-foot vaulted ceilings and no can lights, so Megan found a giant globe fixture to anchor the space. Three larger glass pendants replaced the $10 Edison-bulb lights that hung over the counter. The shiplap sheets, painted Cyberspace by Sherwin-Williams, brought in a navy that sits well beside the cabinets and the grey. Brass hardware replaced the black pulls from phase one. Megan wishes she had made that switch sooner.They also did some electrical work. “We switched out the electrical outlets from the outdated, off-white ones to newer GFCI outlets. These blend into the backsplash better, and it’s a good upgrade to update the electrical. We included a few outlets with USB and micro-USB ports, which was one of the best decisions. It’s so handy not to have to use a block to charge our phones, Apple Watches, and our dogs’ collars,” the couple said.The second phase cost them about $7,243 for the quartz, backsplash, and faucet, plus roughly $992 for grout, brass hardware, décor, and lighting. Add the first round and the total lands near $9,037, all under their $10,000 goal. “We came in under, which is shocking,” the couple said.And after the renovations, it is tough to imagine that the kitchen was once a red, gaudy space. For Megan, the best part of the kitchen is the countertops. The weekend after they were done, she made jam, and cleanup took almost no effort. After all, that was the goal: a functional and aesthetically pleasing kitchen.
