help_ I bought a house with PINK counter tops

Hi, I recently purchased a 5 year old home. The original owner did not do any 'upgrade' at all, just had gotten the basic fixtures that come with the house from the builder. I love the house, but I hate 2 parts of the house.

  1. The kitchen cabinets are all laminate type. The cabinets look of good quality (ie: the newer types, the one that doesn't scratch or anything) but I just wish the colour matched the rest of the kitchen! What options do I have other than to completely replace the cabinets? Refacing the cabinets with a different color laminate sounds like an option, but it looks like an expensive and tedious job. Any ways to treat it to look a bit darker?

  1. The bathroom and kitchen counter tops (these are laminate too) are the most awful of all, the ones in the bathroom are PINK! I'd like to replace the entire counter top, but is there a cheaper alternative?

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. apkesh

Reply to
Apkesh
Loading thread data ...

nothing is cheaper (less expensive) than laminate. it is the bottom ..............in countertop surfaces.

Reply to
3GCPO

I ran into something like this back when I was a renter. One apartment my wife and I rented had metal kitchen cabinets and were painted a sort of an aqua-turquiose green. We could have repainted them some other color, but my wife and I are basically pretty lazy, so we just learned to live with them -- and actually, the color sort of grew on us over a few months.

If you can't live with the current color scheme, you have one thing going for you anyway when it comes to your countertops. Laminate is relatively easily replaced, with "relatively" being a relative term. It can be removed, but not always easily, especially if it was glued down really well in the first place -- thereby making it one of those DIY projects that are really more trouble than they're worth. IMO, save yourself a lot of aggravation and just replace the entire countertop assembly, especially if the cabs are in really nice shape.

Same goes for cabinets, except they tend to be more of a pain in the ass than countertops. I'd have those professionally refaced. If I recall right, I think even Sears has a cabinet refacing business that might be worth looking into. No mattr who does it, tho, it would still be cheaper than getting all new cabs.

AJS

Reply to
AJScott

Apkesh, I can't think of a solution at the moment, but I feel your pain. I like pink in flowers, natural rock formations, sunsets...but never never never as part of a house. I once lived as a student in a house painted pink on the outside, and my only consolation was that, usually, I only saw the outside twice a day. zemedelec

Reply to
Zemedelec

You are like my wife. Buy a house and then spend the next 3 ot 5 years and $thousands$ changing it to the way you want it. I would not buy something I didn't like in the first place. Just keep looking until you find what you want or in your offer, put a clause stating that you are reducing the amount offered by so much to allow for repairing / replacing whatever it is you don't like about the house.

Reply to
Des Perado

Heh-heh -- dream on, my friend. Whenever you buy any pre-owned house, there's ALWAYS something about it that you don't like in the first place and spend years and $$thousands changing it to the way you want it.

But then again, this is why we hear stories about people who looked at

150 homes before actually buying one which, oddly enough, they ended up spending money to change somehow.

Picky picky picky ...

AJS

Reply to
AJScott

Line the counter top with Pepto Bismol bottles. Contact the marketing dept. for Pepto, and tell them you want to advertise their product on the internet. Send lots of digital photos of the counter with the Pepto bottles, and you might make millions. If not, you got plenty of Pepto to take each time the counter makes you puke.

There are 3 other options. Paint the counter, replace the counter or sell the house to a gay guy, because pink is usually their favorite color.

Reply to
sportsman

Several months ago in Washington Post I read about a new spray paint (may even be just a Krylon) that adheres well to laminates, even countertops. Haven't tried it yet (and I'm skeptical for horizontal applications) but might be worth trying if going to replace anyway. On the other hand, if I remember correctly, there was an article in Fine Homebuilding w/in past year about person who demolished "pink" bathroom fixtures only to discover when saw outside in trash under natural light that actually not pink, but an attractive other color. Try checking cabinets against true white and try different light bulbs with very high CRI. Might be surprised.

Reply to
mccaldwell

I see ads every day for replacing the 'faces' of kitchen cabinets -- doors, drawer fronts, etc -- at lower cost than redoing the kitchen. There's always paint. Counter tops may be more difficult, particularly in the kitchen where they receive a lot of use. I am sitting beside a pink-topped counter/cupboard section that was removed and reassigned during kitchen renovation. It's covered in computer junk, and I don't notice it much any more. Rather than paint on the counters, is it possible there's some kind of bleach that might un-pink it to a more bearable shade? Until you can gradually renovate the space.

Reply to
Frogleg

Wow, Apkesh, that could have been me writing that post :)

My husband and I bought a good house in a good location for a good price - it's an excellent investment, BUT there are PINK laminate countertops in the kitchen, PURPLE in the master bath, and a bearable powder blue in the guest bath. Puke.

The kitchen cabinets are that sort of bleached-out pinky tan that's in every apartment complex in the suburban DC area.

Our solution: We're trying to change the feel of the room one thing at a time. We will need to replace the countertops, for sure. No getting around that. However, the cabinets already look better now that we've re-finished the tacky, cheap-looking brass hardware by sanding, priming, and spray-painting it with a dark bronze metallic finish paint. It's holding up pretty well so far, but it we discover that the wear and tear is too hard on the paint, we'll just replace the hardware. That one change made a dramatic difference in the look of the cabinets.

We replaced the white, pink, and blue flowery linoleum floor (puke again) with dark natural-stone-looking tile. We made sure to choose a color that would help tone down the pink tones in the cabinets. Again a huge improvement, but also a pretty sizable time and cash investment.

Next step is replacing the countertops. Then a little paint, and hopefully it will no longer look like... well, pink, flowery, and cheap :p

-- Jennifer

Reply to
Jennifer

carved with his roto-zip this awful statement

just remember: the best things in life are PINK

Reply to
3GCPO

The really best things in life are not only pink, but also wet. But then everyone would have to get into a big discussion about moisture and black mold and everything ....

heh-heh.

AJS

Reply to
AJScott

What were you thinking? Surely you noticed the countertops were pink before you bought the house. You should have been prepared before purchasing it to make those kinds of changes afterwards.

AJScott wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@netnews.worldnet.att.net:

Reply to
Wayne Boatwright

Makes one wonder, doesn't it? Tastes certainly differ. Got a tour of a newly built house across the street. Nice, in that the over-all investment upped property values, but geez -- it was all 'features' and no 'decor.' Built-in stereo speakers everywhere, but a nasty off-the-shelf Formica kitchen and some sort of brown/gray industrial carpet thoughout. 3 (three!) bathrooms, but each like a motel room accomodation of molded fiberglass. Color wasn't a problem, because there isn't any. As I recall, everything was beige. *Everything.*

OTOH, I think many are unwilling to make *temporary* changes to houses. Maybe paint on counters and cabinets won't last, but it's an interim solution. If you can't stand 'em and know you're going to have to replace eventually, slap on a coat of *something* to keep your eyes from hurting. If you hate, hate, hate it, glue on some seashells or make collages. Astro-turf with daisies. You can always change it.

Reply to
Frogleg

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.