A Low-Budget Under the Sink Revival

If you live in an older house like me, chances are there may be some spaces that are a bit frightening to look at up close and personal. For us, one such spot was under the kitchen sink. This space clearly had been neglected for MANY years and really had the ick factor going for it. We have plans down the road to build new cabinets, so I wanted to address this space but in a super low-budget way. Let's dive in!

Okay taking a look at the before, from an organizing perspective, it's not horrible. But I did feel that it was a bit overcrowded and wanted to utilize the righthand door for storage space (a great way to gain real estate under the sink or in your pantry!). But the overall vibe...gross. The back panel was probably last painted in 1968 when the house was built along with the ages-old contact paper lining the bottom. So first up, I ripped out all the contact paper which, because it was so old, actually came up pretty easily - a big relief!

Next came cleaning the space with good ol' fashioned soap and scrubby brush. This was very gross and I chose not to document it for your benefit. Yikes!

One thing I didn't realize until I got into cleaning was that the old wrap for the electrical wires (the exterior one that was grouping them together) was actually disintegrating and making a huge crumbly mess at the back of the cabinet. To resolve this issue, I rewrapped the wires with electrical tape.

Next up was painting the back panel. I had leftover white paint from our bathroom, so I just used that. I probably could've gone for another coat, but again, we're talking about an under the sink cabinet that will eventually get taken out.

What a difference paint can make! It's starting to look not *quite* so scary down there!

Next I put a non-adhesive shelf liner in the bottom (Link here), and used brass tacks to secure around the edges. Since this is a heavily used area, I wanted the lining to be secured in some way. And finally, the finishing touches were adding the door organizer (Similar here), adding a simple nail to hang our duster, and doing a quick edit on what items were to go back into the cabinet.

So there you have it! Overall this project cost around $10 and took about 2 hours to complete, and now when I go to grab my cleaning caddy I'm not horrified - so that's a big win!

Ps - If you're wondering why our laundry detergent is under the sink - our washer/dryer is in the kitchen! Call me crazy, but I actually like it - I get more laundry done ;)