DIY Gran Transforms Empty Shell Into Striking Blue Kitchen Using FB Marketplace
- Cookie Johnson, 61, moved into a house that had no kitchen
- She bought an old kitchen for £400 on Facebook Marketplace and modernised it with blue paint
- She saved over £4,000 compared to getting a new kitchen professionally installed
If your kitchen has seen better days, you might have wanted to transform it without spending a fortune: so take a leaf out of this DIYer’s book.
Cookie Johnson, 61, a credit controller, mum and grandmother from Lancashire, moved into a house that had no kitchen.
Instead, there was an empty shell of a room.
Determined to transform it without spending a fortune, she bought an old kitchen for £400 on Facebook Marketplace and modernised it using blue Frenchic paint.
She also enlisted the help of her partner, an electrician and a gas engineer, bringing the total spend to £1,945.
Cookie estimates she saved over £4,000 compared to getting a new kitchen professionally installed.
Cookie told money-saving Facebook group DIY On A Budget UK: “I moved into the house in August 2020.
“It was built in 1912 and has been in the same family for all that time.
"When I moved in it had been empty for four years and had no kitchen.
“It had some lovely features but was going to take a lot of work to restore.
"I wasn't any good with practical skills but I have learnt very quickly!
“I first started to use Frenchic when I upcycled a pine bed. I was thrilled I could upcycle and caught the Frenchic bug!
“I have since used Frenchic on drawers, bedside cabinets, a desk, metal bed lights and even rope blanket boxes.
"The kitchen was a shell.
“I bought a second-hand kitchen from Facebook Marketplace for £400 which included the sink, dishwasher and washing machine.
"My partner John is very handy and managed to use most of the recycled cabinets to create a new kitchen.
“We bought a new oven, hob and freezer.
“The kitchen looked ok but didn’t have the wow effect, so I just had to Frenchic it.
“It took two weeks to paint. I took all the cupboards off.
“Three of the cupboards were stripped as they had bubbled.
“I used a hairdryer to peel off the outer layer.
"These three fronts had two coats of MDF primer and then three coats of Frenchic.
“All the other cabinets were sugar soaped and then I painted three coats of Frenchic.
"The handles were soaked in sugar soap and then wire wool scrubbed followed by a metallic grey spray paint from Wilko.
“I used one tin of Frenchic Ol' Blue Eyes for £19.95 and I've still got about a fifth left!
“The primer was £8 and the spray paint was £9. I also used half a bottle of sugar soap.
“The total spend was £1,945. The biggest expense was the building materials like the insulation, pipework, gas installation, wiring and all the plasterboard!
“We had an electrician for the electrics and a gas engineer for installing gas.
"John did all the heavy work and kitchen fitting.
"I was chief sander, painter, design and locator of secondhand or cheapest prices.
“I reckon if it had been done professionally would have cost in the region of £6,000.
"John's DIY skills saved me an absolute fortune!!
"Saving £4,000 meant I could do the kitchen in one go instead of saving and then doing some more!
“I’m thoroughly pleased with the saving as we had a really small budget!
“I am so thrilled with it, it looks amazing and is very different. It gets lots of 'wows' from visitors!”
Tom Church, co-founder of LatestDeals.co.uk, comments: “Most of us would look at that empty shell of a kitchen and be far too intimidated to take on the task ourselves.
“Well done to Cookie and John for putting in the blood, sweat and tears to turn an empty room into a gorgeous and functional kitchen.
“I love so many of Cookie’s money-saving tricks: buying a secondhand kitchen on social media can elicit some fantastic deals!"
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She should be proud as she certainly done a really good job of them and he colour looks good too.