My once-in-a-lifetime kitchen remodeling project starts tomorrow. The cheap cabinetry and counters are honestly falling apart, so I am taking the opportunity to do everything very different. You may get to see the results this fall. Meanwhile, if you don't need a major remodel, but you're just not happy with the way your kitchen looks, Apartment Therapy has a series of kitchen upgrades that people did themselves to make what they have look the way they want it to. The "before" pictures are okay, but the "after" pictures are a cheery splash of color. One project made a too-modern minimalist kitchen look more in tune with the 100-year-old house, with just new cabinet hardware and a coat of paint.
Another family took a perfectly fine but drab white kitchen and livened it up with pink and blue for only $800. A sad beige kitchen got the pink and blue treatment inspired by Polly Pocket. Another kitchen goes from an orangish wood to seafoam green for only $96 in paint!
There are other, more pricey kitchen renovations you can see by scrolling down from those posts. But what I took from the posts linked here is that 1. if what you have isn't falling apart, you can update your kitchen without having to take out a mortgage, and 2. there's nothing wrong with color. And there's nothing wrong with painting your kitchen cabinets with your favorite colors to make it a bright and happy place to work in.
(Image credit: Lyndsey Wardman)