Kitchens are the heart of our homes. Give your kitchen an update without great expense. Remodeling your kitchen can be the budget buster for your home improvement project. In many cases you can bring life to your house without the extreme expense of completely gutting the kitchen and starting over. You must look at your house and especially your kitchen from a whole new perspective. Are you ready for the mind shift?Next weekend, drive to three open houses. Walk through the homes with the eye of a buyer. Stick with me here. We are opening your eyes and changing your perspective. As you walk through the homes, think about the nice features and the negative ones. Pay particular focus on the kitchen and adjoining rooms.Drive home immediately after your tour.Keep your buyer’s hat on. Walk into your house through your front door. No cheating, use the FRONT DOOR. Look at your house with the same discerning eye that you had when you walked through the open houses. What would you do to make your house more appealing? List 10 items. What makes your house special? List those items.Now lets get to business. Start with the list of items that make your kitchen special. What can you do to make accentuate those features? Make a list.Now take a look at the list of 10 items that will make your kitchen more appealing. Rank the items in order of expense and effort. Once complete, rank the same list again in order of the effect the change will have on the feel of your house. Look at the three lists that you have compiled. Do you see any items on the ‘make my kitchen appealing’ list that will contribute to accenting the items that make your house most appealing.We are looking at building your house’s muscle; strengthening its strengths. In other words, we are creating a clearer and more unified focus on the positive features of your home.5 inexpensive solutions to update your kitchen:1. The obvious first choice is paint. This is the weekend warrior’s special. Almost anyone can paint a minor portion of their home over a weekend. Myself included; and this is from the voice of a believer that “if I can do the home improvement project, there must be thousands that can do it better.”Look as paint as a woman looks at her hair. If you get tired of the look, make a change. In fact, paint is more like a haircut than you may think. As with a bad haircut, a poor choice in paint colors can easily be changed. The wrong paint color can be quite forgiving.There are some simple rules and ideas to keep in mind when painting. If you need assistance in color selection, go to Home Improvement U’s Design Center for a step by step guide on how to select colors for your remodeling project.2. Light, Light and More Light. Natural light is the best form. Adding light will alter the feel of your kitchen for the better. Your kitchen will feel larger and more open with the use of natural light.Adding a solar tube or two is easy and inexpensive. That is if you don’t have another room above your kitchen. If all else fails, add lighting to your kitchen. A thoughtful choice in light fixtures can add the pop you are looking for in your kitchen home improvement project.3. Cabinet door pulls can give just the right touch to your kitchen. In most cases, affordable door and drawer pulls can be an affordable way to add character to your kitchen.4. Kitchen faucet is the next item for sprucing up. Not only will a new faucet look good, it will be a functional addition to your kitchen improvement.5. Appliances can have a big effect on the look and feel of your kitchen. The refrigerator and range are the two most visible appliances. There is no need to worry here. There are tactics to saving on appliances. Visit us at Home Improvement U for Appliance Savings Tips.With your revised mindset and samples of effective remodeling solutions to improve look of your kitchen at a minimal expense, you are ready to move forward with your budget kitchen remodeling project.

Remodeling your kitchen can be a hectic task and a huge project by itself. First of all draw up a list of things to buy and put a budget in place. You can then monitor all your purchases to ensure you do not exceed the budget. The other best thing to do would be to ensure you buy each individual item yourself after understanding the basics and comparing the pros and cons with others. Things like buying granite tops etc will need thorough understanding of the product.Granites are not very cheap and come in very many verities and designs too. Only when you have understood more about it will you be able to make the correct and right choice on the particular type, shade as well as size required for yourself. This way you will pay the right price and do not end up spending more than intended.How do you calculate the cost of granite countertops? Read through the article given below.You will first need to choose the right quality granite that would fit into your overall budget and is of good quality. Keeping this as a base specification, get samples and quotes for the same specs from three to four other suppliers too. Now you have comparative quotes for the same product on hand.You have the unit price of the tile on hand. Next thing to do is to arrive at the total cost. For this you will first estimate the total area and size of your counter top and calculate the number of tiles you will require. Next add a ten percentage wastage factor to the total numbers. Now take the unit price of the tile and multiply with the total quantity of tiles required and you will arrive at the total cost.There are two ways of fixing the granite top. Either you can do it yourself personally if you know how to do such things, or get a professional to do the job for you. You will need additional materials, tools and implements including sealant, grout etc. You can get a list of things required as well as the prices from the local hardware shop keeper.Now all you need to do is to get a quote from a reliable and known contractor for cost plus basis. Negotiate and settle a deal with him for executing the work alone and you buy the granite directly from the supplier and get it so that he can fix it.Now you have complete control over the price and quality of granite that you are buying directly from the supplier and can avoid paying unnecessary overheads.