Before & After: Transforming a Kitchen on a Budget!

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Minimalist
HDB (BTO)
~1,000 sqft
3 br
Couple Living

Welcome to our kitchen where we spend a lot of our time in everyday! As we balloted our home via SBF, we didn't have the option to select an open kitchen plan. When we first entered our unit, this particular area felt rather enclosed and dark. So, we knew from the beginning that we needed to hack the kitchen walls to open up the space more. We're so glad that we did.
One of the decisions we made that costed us quite a bit in our kitchen was to cement screed over our kitchen tiles. We wanted the versatility of being able to paint the walls and also to cover up drilled holes if we ever wanted to switch things up. With tiles, it would be a lot harder to cover unsightly spots. Some of the other ways we managed to cut cost was to not have top hung cabinets and retaining the existing HDB kitchen tiles.
We believe in investing in good quality materials that will benefit us in the long run. Most of our kitchen appliances are possibly the lowest priced ones in the market. We're okay about it because we know such appliances can be replaced easily should it get damaged in time. Things like countertop and laminates are materials that we believe is worth spending a little more as they would be a lot harder to replace if damaged. Our countertop is made of sintered stone and we're still really happy with it one year later.
We added a concrete sink support since we chose to have a farmhouse sink which is really heavy. We have seen stories of homeowner's sinks collapsing down which is not surprising seeing how the sink area is generally high in moisture and may seep through the carpentry with time. To combat this and make our kitchen last longer, we added a concrete base to place our farmhouse sink on top. Due to the structure of our sink, we needed to get a little creative with how the concrete base is designed.
What used to be a wall is now an extended area of our kitchen which we store all our dry pantry food items in and make drinks on the countertop. Overall, we're happy with how things have turned out despite our small reno budget. While it is not fully furnished like how I envisioned it to be, with time, I know we'll get there eventually. For now, we'll enjoy this process of building our house into a home 😊