@Glen E I am also looking at "modernizing" our kitchen. We are living in one unit of our duplex and making some minor changes in hopes that we can raise the rent when we move out and place tenants. Our kitchen has green countertops with light oak cabinets (It's gross) I did some research and lots of Pinterest searching. Looks like white cabinets and dark countertops are popular.
I also don't want to spend an arm and a leg on upgrading the kitchen, so we will be doing the work ourselves since we are living in the unit. From the videos I watched on YouTube looks like a lot of people have had success with Rustoleum countertop paint around $22.00 at Lowes and Behr Alkyd Semi-gloss enamel paint for the cabinets around $35.99
We painted the cabinets in our old house white and used a high gloss for the cabinets because it was easier to clean spills from the kitchen. We stayed in the house for three years and the cabinets were still in good shape when we sold it, we didn't have to touch up the paint like I thought we would have had to.
Another thing we've done to make the kitchen look more modern is upgrading the appliances to stainless steel. We had white appliances that were so old they looked yellow. We were going to ride them out until they stopped working but I found a local guy that gets brand new appliances really cheap (don't know how he does it, but I don't ask questions) I also browse through the ding and dent sections at local appliance stores. So far we've only replaced the dishwasher and its looking good!
I'd love to hear what you decide to do with your kitchen, please keep me posted!
