** Please if you would rather not read the wall of text for context just look at this album and tell me if you think we should pull the cabinets or try to rehab them with a paint job ** thanks!

Wall of text:

Good evening! My partner and I purchased a home (built in 1955) in the Seattle area. We're first time homeowners so we have learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes. We made some pretty dramatic changes quickly, one of which was to cut a wall in the kitchen down to half to (approximate) the counter height to create an island of sorts. Now we're at a point where we are trying to replace the countertops and the question has become should we change the cabinets out at this point because we've messed them up a bit in some places (see below).

Album of all kitchen pictures + some of kitchen we bought house

The situation

Cabinets are solid wood

Cabinets are likely somewhat custom due to their sizing (27 inches top cabinets etc)

In some places there are uneven cuts made to cabinet edges or to create an oven cutout (context below).

We would prefer the cabinets be grey / blue.

Some pictures of the kitchen:

Wide Shot of Kitchen

Cabinet Corner

Kitchen picture from center

"island" Picture

Island opening

Cooktop / Oven / Range

The Fridge

To fit a modern sized refrigerator we had to cut into the cabinets near the fridge nook to remove some "extra", unfortunately (and you'll notice this motif) I am not a carpenter and frankly did a crap job of making it even. In addition to that, we had to remove the drywall from the right side of the nook because again the fridge would not fit even after cuts to the cabinet edges. So to install a countertop we will have to remove more of the wall to the right (not sure if that beam across is load bearing or not), or if we get new cabinets then decrease the size of that one cabinet near the fridge so it has more clearance.

Cabinet closeness to fridge You can see my crappy uneven cuts

Drywall/Fridge Closeness More uneven cuts

Fridge wall (to cut back or not?) -- so this was one idea was to have the wall removed from that side of the kitchen and then we could push the fridge out further without needing to replace cabinets. But that would require us to build out the kitchen floor which is not level with the wood floors, and then have the electrical moved down the hallway. Not to mention the fact that there is a beam up above going across and we're not sure if it's load bearing or not or what that would look like without the wall below it.

The Oven cutout When we cut the wall in half we removed an ancient oven and got a new one. But to fit that oven into the leftover cabinets we had to make a very hodge podge cutout to fit the oven. We figured we would frame it later to cover up the potentially bad job, but it could definitely look better as where I cut the top is not an even line. I beg forgiveness to any carpenters who see this.

Oven Issue (we cut out the hole into the cabinet ourselves)

Top of oven "cutout"

More oven cutout

Did someone mention gap?

The Island

Island was made of a full wall previously, cut down to a half wall. It is not perfectly level. It's pretty close, but not perfect. There is a large gap where the cabinet holding the oven used to be, we put our trash cans there. The idea before was to just cover that with new countertop and leave that gap there, but I'm not as much of a fan of that idea. Which is part of why I'm leaning toward replacing the cabinets.

Island wide

Island gap

More island

The options (as we see them)

So we've had a contractor/handyman in and he suggested we tear it all out. Now I get that the guy who does the work suggesting we pay for new cabinets isn't surprising, but it is something I've contemplated too.

Option 1: Remodel the kitchen by getting new cabinets, new countertops, redoing (don't need to necessarily get new flooring) our vinyl flooring because it is slipping, installing baseboards as we don't have them right now. We are trying to decide between IKEA, HomeDepot etc, and RTA / something else. The contractor suggested home depot because it's cheaper and easy to work with. He quoted us at 8-10k in labor to pull all the cabinets, reinstall new ones. I'm sure that could go higher depending on what he finds.

Option 2: Do something to the fridge wall so we can move the fridge over to the right slightly so new countertops can be installed, have someone paint the cabinets. We may not need to remove the wall entirely, but it would have to be made thinner. I have no idea what this would cost compared to a redo of cabinets and countertops, maybe half?

The objective

This house is not our forever home (at least not by choice). While I like it here, I do not see myself living here for 20 years. My partner is hoping to recoup what we put into the kitchen when it comes time to sell (likely 5-8 years). I think that is incredibly hard to quantify and given that Seattle area is a seller's market typically I'm not too concerned with the return on an investment in the kitchen. I'm not expecting a dollar for dollar return though, but I know she would prefer it be like that. To me if we can make the kitchen space more enjoyable and also recoup some of the cost of it in the process that is worth it even if we only stay here 4 more years (been here for 1 year).

We have money to do this, it's just about return and we're having a hard time figuring out if we'll regret spending too much or if we'll regret not going far enough (keeping cabinets) / the end result isn't how we want it.

Anyway, if you can take a look at the pictures of the kitchen and give input as to whether or not we should try to salvage them with the help of a carpenter / repaint that would be helpful. I'm not even sure if a carpenter could salvage them.