Three Easy Upgrades Gretch Is Adding To Her Rental Kitchen (+ A Renter-Friendly Reno Project On The Horizon)

I’m sitting across my half-baked, honey oak rental kitchen, staring it down from the couch as my left foot rests, iced and elevated. The Bear is streaming on the massive TV I’ve placed on a bench and pushed up against the back of my kitchen island. I tune out the show, opting instead to question this abandoned project and my sanity.

About two weeks ago, I took off camping to celebrate a best friend’s birthday and came back a changed woman. But not for the better. The trip started out wonderful—a carefree vacation with close friends, overlooking a beautiful body of water. Paddleboarding all day with dinner by the fire, friends piled onto inner tubes we’d been using as couches, laughing all night long. But the next day, the birthday girl cracks her phone and doubles down by accidentally dropping it in the water, rendering it useless. At dusk AND dawn, the bugs descend on our camp, literally thousands, eating us alive. Chiggers. Mosquitoes. We all become more bug bite than skin. The red cherry on top is a sunburn that graces my cheeks with a swimsuit line so sharp it could cut wood (pun intended and you’ll soon see why). The good times are fading fast as frustration and discomfort set in, but we do our best to present a united, positive front. And with one swift chop I shut that down immediately.

A swing and a miss with the axe I was using to prep wood for our evening fire instead comes down hard on my foot. I’m bleeding profusely because the only protection I have are my Birkenstocks over bare skin. Miraculously, the top strap stops me from removing any digits but a fresh gash presents itself in the negative space between. I’m rushed to St. Charles emergency room, a cool 45 minutes away, looking through tears at my foot sitting up on the dash, watching as the Coors light shirt wrapped around my wound changes color. From a dirt-encrusted white to a deep, tie-dyed red (DIY coming soon! All natural pigment!). A panic attack and nine stitches later…I am, essentially, fine.

But what does this have to do with my kitchen? And why did I just write three paragraphs about a foot injury on a design blog? Well, I write like I talk—a lot. Plus I want you to feel sorry for me. But before this all went down, my kitchen design plan was scheduled to go up last week. Meaning before I left for the trip, I needed to start putting said plan into action, taking ideas from my head and my Amazon cart over to the room itself. And so I did. I intended to come back and have last week to finish up the project while Em was out on vacation. But life had other plans and I instead spent that week in Bend, OR recovering. And now this half-done kitchen is laughing at me and my bum foot as I figure out what to share with you all.

You see, my kitchen is dated, comprised of warm-toned wood cabinets, dramatic boob lights, and ornate, silver drawer pulls. A makeover was inevitable, but I’m fairly new to the place and still too timid to ask if I can just paint over their delicious honey oak cabinet exterior since my design limitations are locked into a lease agreement. But thankfully, from the words of Zoolander’s Hansel (and more recently EHD), wall-to-wall wood is “so hot right now”, so I’ve decided to lean in.

For me, this looks like covering the kitchen walls in matching wood-printed, renter-friendly contact paper (maybe eventually swapping it for the real deal if I can convince myself and my landlord that the “wood paneled” look serves). Doing this should, in theory, elongate the cabinets hindered by a drop ceiling and give me the slightly more 70s look I crave anyway. Plus, Lone Fox has me dreaming of a wood-drenched space of my own ever since he paneled the pass-thru space between his bedroom and bathroom. It got me thinking that maybe, just maybe, an all-over honey-glow wouldn’t be so bad. It might even be…cool?

So I went forth and covered a portion of my kitchen in this nearly identical wood contact paper from Amazon—a really inexpensive way for me to test drive the look. It was so easy to apply (when I had two working feet) and I can 100% remove it with ease. I finished covering most of the walls above the cabinets before I ran out of contact paper and time. I took it just a touch above the crown moulding and a little bit past the wood of the cabinetry so I could swoop back around later with an x-acto knife and give it a trim. That “later” part has yet to happen.

To really lean into the monochrome vibe, I ordered these beautiful wooden cabinet pulls from Etsy. Swapping cabinet hardware is usually the easiest, fastest, and most inexpensive way to give your kitchen a refresh when you don’t have a lot of free will with permanent design choices like me. For now, I’m storing the old pulls until move out and going back to staring at these wooden ones until my head spins. I love them, on their own, but I’m not fully convinced about them installed. The cabinet pilot holes were a little janky to begin with and their crookedness kind of stands out to me. The color match isn’t as close as I’d like either, but I’m also not sure I hate the way it looks since it does provide a bit of dimension. I might attempt a stain on the pulls to see what that does for my staring problem. But we shall see.

Another easy swap would be the lighting. And as you can see here, I have not one but TWO ridiculous boob lights. A perfectly perky, bedazzled RACK. These simply have to go. I could swap the fixtures for a new pair—and I might eventually—but this first round of design is all about even easier moves, like contact paper and drawer pulls. I’ve had my eye on these Tulip light covers for a while and I’m really hoping to try them out in the space.

They look pretty great in my mockup and I love their temporary status. Something about the fabric and the grid pattern on the Gem style really sings with the tile backsplash. Plus I like how they add a bit of softness to the space. I’m curious how easy they are to install, but from what I’ve seen online, it looks pretty simple! But easy and simple are only fun for so long, and this wouldn’t be a project of mine if I didn’t choose to sprinkle in something semi-complicated.

My kitchen is connected to my living space and while I love an open concept I’m very much about “zoning” different areas and their functions and it’s been tricky to do that in here. My place has front and back entrances with large windows, providing minimal wall space on either end.

A terrible, singular ceiling fan sits overhead the intended dining area just to the right of the kitchen. Smack dab in the living area is my kitchen island, anchored to a support beam. There’s a spot for a couple of barstools on the backside of the island, but with the addition of a small dining table, the area just feels too cramped and obstructs the path to my balcony. Also, just doing barstools won’t leave me with enough seating and I want to be able to sit across from my people.

When I moved in, I placed my large sofa against the front window wall, setting my TV along the wall to the right of it. The above is just bad Photoshop, but you get the idea. Not my favorite layout because it’s really not as comfortable to have a movie night with friends this way, cranking your neck to see the screen. But there’s not enough space for the couch to face it unless it becomes one with the island and inevitably disrupts the flow of the room. So I had a “project thought,” which is a sign that mild construction is on the way. To test it out, I rearranged and have been experiencing a half-done living room for some time now, to see if my plan is worth the follow-through.

Basically, I swapped the dining zone with my couching zone, moving the sofa from the front window to the long wall across from the kitchen island. Now the tv sits on a low bench, butted up against the island. It looks so stupid and huge, BUT I am enjoying the new layout spatially and I think I’ll go through with said “project” in hopes that I can turn it into a cool focal point, full of intention and intrigue. Maybe it ends up looking stupid too, but I won’t know unless I try!

The Project: I’m aiming to build a (renter-friendly) half wall against the back of the island to serve as the TV wall. It would align with the annoying support beam and wrap around to form an L, stopping instead of returning along the other side of the island. I’d of course need to upgrade to a Frame TV and size WAY down from my current, especially because the couch sits pretty close, so no need for a huge screen. The wall would be constructed in a way that would be sturdy but impermanent. It would match the rest of the newly saturated honey oak kitchen (integrating seamlessly in my mind). Rising maybe 18” or so from the counter, it could serve as a visual separation between kitchen and living room, but more than that it would give me extra elbow room over in “wooden wonderland”. Throw in a half wall and suddenly the island transforms into super-deep counter space. I can store my coffee maker and cookbooks up against the new wooden backsplash in the kitchen, leaving me plenty of counter space, with unsightly cords and pages totally hidden from view on the other side.

Now, this will definitely require some power tools (and probably supervision knowing my track record), but I think I can make it happen after I’m wholly healed in the foot department. I ordered another roll of contact paper and plan on seeing the rest through, taking the “wood” all the way across the back wall, outlining the balcony doors and over and around the support beam. For now, the boob lights continue to haunt me and I’m hoping the right answer on these new pulls comes to me in a dream or something. I’m excited to get the ball rolling and see what else is revealed to me as I go. I can’t guarantee that my ideas will work or that they’ll stick around by the time I post a “kitchen reveal”. But for now, this is where my creative brain is marinating while I wait for the feeling in my foot to return and The Bear to come back from commercial. Stay tuned!

Sincerely,

Gretch