5. Swap the cabinet and door handles
This is the smallest job on the list and one of the most effective. Kitchen cabinet doors are usually the largest expanse of surface in a rental kitchen, and the handles are the only part of them you touch. Cheap, dated handles make good doors look bad.
A full set of handles for a small kitchen costs $30 to $80, CA$45 to CA$110 or £25 to £60, and fitting them is a screwdriver job taking under an hour. The result reads as a kitchen refit from across the room.
Measure before you buy. The critical dimension is the centre-to-centre distance between the two screw holes — commonly 96 mm, 128 mm or 160 mm. Buy handles matching your existing centres and you reuse the holes, which means no drilling, no damage and a completely reversible change. Knobs with a single screw fit anywhere and are the safe choice if your existing centres are unusual.
Take the old handles off, put every one of them plus their screws into a labelled zip bag, and store it with the light shades. Handle screws are often a different length to the new ones, so keep both sets.
While you have the screwdriver out, do the interior door handles and the loo-roll holder too. And if any cabinet door hangs crooked, the hinges almost certainly have adjustment screws — one for side-to-side, one for depth — and five minutes of tweaking makes every door line up, which is free and surprisingly satisfying.
Cupboard interiors take a similar low-cost upgrade: peel-off liner in the bottom of the sink cupboard protects against leaks and comes out at the end.