Yahoo! Movies shared a wonderful story that will certainly interest a lot of people looking to renovate their kitchen countertops. Apparently, TikTok user Melissa Mondragon and her husband renovated their kitchen countertops for less than $200! In a TikTok video, Mondragon explains that the couple achieved this by creating convincing fakes of marble covers to place on their granite tabletops. What makes this story even more alluring is that neither Mondragon nor her husband are interior designers or contractors.
In order to pull this off, the couple first painted over their countertops with white paint, prior to painting on the marble veins, and then topping that off with epoxy, an anchoring adhesive to seal everything together.
The couple took four days to complete their renovation. In an interview with the Insider, the couple said that the most difficult part of the process was painting over the veins. According to Mondragon, you can safely place food on the countertop after a week.
The couple’s kitchen countertop renovation has earned their TikTok video more than 43 million views. Yahoo! Movies provide the following picture, which shows just how dramatic a transformation the couple were able to pull off for less than $180.
A couple just shared a genius, cheap trick for sprucing up your kitchen countertop.
The couple are not done yet, and plan on fully remodeling their kitchen in the next year, according to another TikTok video Mondragon shared.
You can’t please everyone, and surely enough there were the usual troupe of bashers, with some feeling that painting over granite was “criminal”, with one likening her renovation to “putting carpet over real hardwood floors”, and a few horrified by her low-cost approach to working on very expensive natural granite.
The criticism overlooks the fact that kitchen remodels can be very expensive, and in the pandemic economy, where many people are struggling economically, finding ways to remodel at a low cost is perfectly rational.
Homeowners typically spend between $12,500 and $60,400 to remodel a kitchen, for an average expenditure of $36,450. That’s a lot of money for most people. Countertops make up a huge reason why kitchen remodels are so expensive, so finding well priced countertops at a place like Legacy Countertops, is very important.
When you combine all the pricey components of a kitchen remodel you end up with a huge bill. The story does not end there: it is not just what you see that is expensive -countertops, cabinets, etc-, it’s also what you don’t see: the costs of breaking up your current kitchen, or changing the plumbing to suit a new layout, or making changes to the kitchen’s structure, among other things. All this adds up. Throw in the cost of getting good, skilled tradesmen and your bill rises even further. Estimates indicate that labor costs for a kitchen remodel can amount to 25 to 40% of your total budget. When you think of it that way, it’s easy to see why this story has gained so much traction with so many people.
Renovating Countertop on the Cheap
