Kitchens are a huge part of any living space even if they are quite small. The kitchen in any home is usually the hub of all activity especially as it's the place where ultimately you are fed from and without one your house would be in a very sorry state. It is vitally important for any home owner to take pride in their kitchen from an investment point of view as well as a practical point of view.

What follows below is a quick guide on how you can improve your kitchen on a shoe string budget.

If we break a kitchen into components it would look something like, back cabinets, doors, work tops, appliances, handles and tiles or splash back panels. To replace a kitchen completely you are probably looking at anything from £5000 upwards plus whatever the installation costs. This sort of figure is enough to scare anybody. In order to drastically change the look of your kitchen at a fraction of the cost all you need to do is follow the simple steps below:

Leave your back cabinets in. The back panels are what make up your kitchen and are what everything else fits to. Unless you want to change the layout of your kitchen this is going to be your biggest money saver. This is because if these are already installed everything else pretty much just screws to them and you don't have to pay somebody to come and install it. As they don't have many moving parts unless they are extremely old will probably still be in good standing.

Worktops are the next step and are something that can be picked up quite cheaply. Visit a local timber yard as they usually have off cuts of would that would make excellent work tops. For a small cost they will probably even cut them to size for you. In addition timber yards in most cases will stock work tops at a much lower price than the bigger home improvement stores.

Kitchen doors are the next step and can make a real difference to the look and feel of your kitchen. If your kitchen is that old the range you have may still be available in which case all you need to do is go and buy some new doors. Buying new doors is obviously cheaper than buying a complete kitchen. If you have purchased the exact same doors from the same range they will screw on quite easily.

If your kitchen is quite old and the range of kitchen you own is no longer sold there are other alternatives. There are websites out there that specialise in kitchen doors only. They will come along measure your kitchen and manufacture doors specifically for your kitchen. This option is slightly more expensive than buying the same doors but still vastly cheaper than replacing the whole kitchen.

Door handles is probably the best and most cost effective way to re vamp your kitchen. In most cases this maybe all you need to do. Most handles will fit most doors so make sure you have a good look round. Always check in the clearance sections to bag yourself an even bigger bargain.

Finally if you replace the tiling or splash backs in your kitchen this can have a drastic effect and will just lift the look of your kitchen. Unless you are handy at DIY it may be difficult to replace the tiling on its own without damaging the rest of the kitchen. Before you attempt this make sure you know what you are doing.

As you can see there are lots and lots of ways to improve the look and feel of your kitchen without spending a fortune, so before you spend all that money take a step back and ask yourself do I really need to?