Hey Paul! Firstly, congrats on starting to adult. I'm yet to begin the homeowning part of that journey but nonetheless will relish in offering my thoughts on your male-accountant-esque aesthetic skills. 1) Glass panels - scrap them! $500 could be better spent elsewhere and it's common, like mentioned above, that people don't want the insides of their cupboards visible. 2) Blackbutt laminate floors and gloss white cupboards - matt benchtop colour I think should also be dependant on paint colour of the walls as well as other furniture. Not sure if you've mentioned that? Neutral is always safe though. In terms of flooring, I agree with the other commenters again in suggesting you rip up the carpet yourself and see the situation on your hands. A bit of elbow grease (and probably a few swear words) and you'll have saved some cash you can invest in the appliances. The amount you're investing in renovating the kitchen should also depending on the scope of your other renovations of the place (how much you're changing/investing in living, bathrooms etc). Side note, but an important consideration, is thinking of the kind of future tenants you would want living in the space and what they would consider important. Kitchens are often the heart of the home, so investing a little more here, especially if visible from front door, IMO isn't completely irrational. In terms of payment/thanks for input - please send cookies.

$3000 for new doors sound like a bargain but if that doesn't include installation i would strongly recommend that you invest in professional installation (at a fixed price) as replacing old hinges can be very challenging for the inexperienced and we've patched a 40 year old kitchen with very thin sheets of melamine placed over damaged shelves, renewed sagging doors by filling up old screw holes and tightened hinges, replaced damaged edges using a roll of iron on edge stripping tape but, the minor damage on your edges and the backless cabinets could easily be disguised with some paint but i have say that our now patched kitchen was designed and built for an architect, various other kitchen we've built or renovated and my newest kitchen also custom made at very high cost have all been made out of a variation of a laminated board ..luckily you love the "very expensive to replace" counters but i would also consider investing in new kickboards to get rid of the quad edges around the floor and a better location for your microwave..and look forward to seeing your results

Yes it’s done now. It will be easy to match the upper ones later on as I picked a neutral white. If I have the bottom cabinets removed, the new cabinets will be a different size to the existing ones, meaning tiles will have to be removed. Removing titles often causes tiles to be damaged and I cannot find the same tiles I have in the kitchen anywhere and they extend throughout the whole house with the exceptions of the bedrooms. Regardless, the upper cabinets are useful whether I find a way to repair the bottom cabinets or replace them. I have had two seperate tradesmen say it’s not possible to remove the shelves of the lower cabinet without replacing the whole cabinet.

Not a problem :) One thing to keep in mind is that if something happens to the neighbours pipes and they need to be accessed via your unit and your cabinets, you will be need to pay for fixing the damage to the cabinets yourself, even though the repair had nothing to do with you and was a strata job. I suspect this is why you have the pipes inside the cabinets right now - something went wrong on the previous occasion (burst pipe?) and instead of doing an expensive fix (opening the walls/floor/having to retile etc) which would have cost the previous owner a fortune, the plumber put a fix via the cabinets - it would have minimised the cost. Normally, if you are completely redoing the kitchen, this alternative fix is removed. Good luck!!