Donna Decorates Dallas: Vintage Home Kitchen Makeover

Donna's daughter Ashley is getting married, and wants to update the kitchen of the home she shares with her fiancee, Weston, who grew up in the house. The kitchen is dated, and kind of falling apart, with cracked tile countertops, scruffy cabinets outmoded appliances, unattractive track lighting, and an overall unimpressive feel. Ashley and Weston differ on what the want the new kitchen to be: Weston wants to combine a sleek and modern look with a touch of the mid-century era in which the house was built. Ashley, on the other hand, wants to incorporate natural stone with touches of darker materials like slate and copper. Donna's challenge is to find a workable middle ground, while managing to stay within the couple's five thousand dollar budget. Donna and Ashley achieve huge savings by shopping at discount supply and salvage outlets, buying appliances online and by making certain improvements--like an attractive cornice board--themselves. Donna kept the original cabinets, but sanded them down and stained them a rich, dark brown, adding stylish brushed nickel door pulls. Donna and Ashley got a great bargain on white marble at a surplus outlet and they used the marble for the floor, countertops and backsplash. The white marble throughout provided a perfect counterpoint to the dark cabinets. To open up the room and provide the contemporary look that Weston wanted, Donna installed a new stainless steel gas countertop stove and venting hood, removed the old cabinets, and installed a white marble subway tile backsplash going all the way to the ceiling. On the floor, Donna put down 12 X 12 marble area tiles surrounded by black mosaic tiles, which saved money and provided a vintage look as did a white porcelain farmhouse sink that Donna and Ashley found at a surplus store for just over a hundred dollars.As a wedding gift, to replace the dated track lighting, Donna provided two elegant crystal chandeliers to complete the kitchen's transformation. Donna's daughter Tiffany is expecting a visit from her mother-in-law, and in preparation, she wants to update her guest bedroom, which lacks color and is generally uninspiring. To bring in a pop of color, Tiffany and Donna change the color of the bed's headboard from dull gray to bright red using fabric spray paint, and raise the headboard to make the room feel bigger. A barrel light in the ceiling above the bed has a translucent acrylic bottom, so Donna and Tiffany drill small holes in the acrylic and using clear fishing line to attach them, dangle three, four and five-inch chains of crystals from the bottom. Then they cover the outside of the barrel with light and billowy white feathers, sprinkled with a few touches of crystal, turning a rather mundane light fixture into an elegant do-it-yourself chandelier.