Is the interior of your house ‘up to date’ and well maintained?

[TheSunShinesBright]

Or is it like mine and a bit rough?
Old kitchen, carpets need replacing, rooms need redecorating...

I’m looking on right move and most houses look like show homes and seem to have brand new kitchens, bathrooms and wallpaper in every room...

I’m starting to think I’m living in a dump.
The walls/ floors are neutral and I have nice furniture but The actual fixtures and fittings are tired. Anyone else?

We've bought DHs grandmas house and haven't yet decorated, so definitely shabby here!

The wallpaper in the kitchen has pears on it, the living room carpet is salmon pink and the bathroom suite is blue 😂.

You're not alone op!

Gosh, no. We have five children, a large dog and both work full time.

The people who decorate yearly tend to have not much else to do ime.

We tend to buy projects and work out way through them.

Kitchen and bathrooms, living rooms and hallways get repainted every two to three years, bedrooms every five ish years. But that might mean it gets a repaint in the same shade or it might be something different.

We haven’t stayed anywhere long enough to need to replace the entire kitchen or bathroom.

We've been in our house for about 5 years and only just finished decorating upstairs rooms. Downstairs at a guess was decorated at least 8 years before we moved in. It looks awful and I can't stand it but it needs rewiring so pointless doing anymore until we can afford that really.

We bought our house in December. It looked like a show home on Rightmove...
When we viewed we realised it needed a bit of work (and negotiated appropriately).

The modern style shaker kitchen is from the 90s and falling apart.
The bathroom is clean but knackered (those stupid round taps, again from the 90s, but white neutral tiles), the living room carpet is very worn in one corner- was covered by furniture. And they'd painted the neutral paint around the telly but not behind 😂.

It's not a problem and we will do stuff as and when we have the time and money. And DH is a keen DIYer.

To be completely fair to the sellers, they'd done the important expensive jobs, kitchen, dining and hall flooring, double glazing and soffits and facias, which is more what we were looking at. It still looks superficially good, it's just lots of bits need attention.

Yes to be fair as we have spent the last seven years renovating

However, when we were house viewing it became obvious pics can be very deceiving. Video tours are much more accurate and not at all forgiving.

We have seen a few threads on here where posters have posted their homes and asked why it’s not selling, and the pics look fine but the video tour shows a totally different story.

Hi, I have to say, we didn't spend time or money on the house before putting it on the market earlier this year. Its a two up two down 1907 terraced cottage in South Essex and needs some work. But it did sell for £260k despite that. £100k profit from what I paid for it in 2013, so I was OK with that especially as it's a bit tatty in places. We just felt that with a crazy toddler, me pregnant and our work commitments, we don't have the energy/time and would actually prefer to spend saved money at the next house. Plus, being mid terraced, it's such a faff for any work that needs doing with people coming in.

Also some people love home improvements more than others, I don't think my hubby and I are into that really. Maybe we're just actually too lazy

Also, I meant to add that we wanted our house to go on the market quick in whatever state because of the no stamp duty too. But even though it sold in February, it doesn't look like it will get it completed before the end of June unfortunately oh well. Its a slow process.

I'm sure loads (most) of places on Rightmove have been 'done' to go on the market. They all look the same as well

They do. Every kitchen is white or grey. Looks like they don’t sell mine anymore! 🤣

Chocolatier9

The estate agent selling my last place described my kitchen as “rather tired”

We had ours valued a few years ago - ‘Well lived in’ was the EA’s comment. I think we’ve progressed to ‘rather tired’ now!

Our kitchen and bathrooms are over 30 years old.
But they still work fine so we don’t care. 🙂

We did a conversion about 22 years ago. Kitchen and bathrooms are mainly the same bar a change of tiles and new shower. We do have a decorator for outside and the larger rooms ie large high ceilings in kitchen, hall and sitting room. But only done these maybe three times at most. Just about to fit some cupboards in the hall which my mother is always saying looks unfinished.

Kitchen will need refreshing but would just like to update the fronts as design and carcasses are good.
Cant Recall last time we bought new bedding, love worn cotton white sheets.

Absolutely not.

Previous owners put up wallpaper every now and then (over the old wallpaper), but otherwise they hadn't updated their home in any major way since the 90's. We've had a new kitchen and bathroom put in, and redecorated 2 of the bedrooms, but there's still so, so, so much still to do.

The fitted wardrobes in our bedroom were probably up-to-date in the 1980s...

@GloriousMystery

Ours is a recently-acquired giant Victorian wreck we’re just camping out in till we decide what to do with it, so it’s a warren of knackered bare floorboards, boxes and chipped, deeply peculiar paint colours.

But I actually quite like it like this. I loathe the matchy show house look, with ‘pops’ of colour.

Snap we are the same and i can’t begin to explain how much I hate the phase “pops of colour” we’ve just painted everything white as it’s cheap and easy!

Everything is grey or painted with farrow and ball! and don’t get me started on fake panelling and fireplaces! Mine is beginning to look better but I don’t have OCD so some of the paintwork we’ve done looks a bit “home done” and the builders messed up a few bits and patched it up and it shows but I don’t care! we have indoor and outdoor animals that all mange to come and crap on my new flooring or bring in dirt so I’m already past caring and it’s only been two months since some of it was renovated 🤣

Our house and furniture have received a lot of extra usage in the past year. I reckon the lockdowns accelerated our timing for painting by at least a year - we usually repaint all of downstairs every 4-5 years. as we were inside a lot more than normal all I can see now are scuff marks and chips. Am so sick to death of our sofa - it’s going as soon as I can afford to replace it.

We put our bathroom in about ten years ago. I thought it still looked brand new, until I stayed in a recently refurbished holiday cottage recently and realised that bathroom trends have moved on. It's still perfectly functional, if not exactly on trend now, so we will stick with it for as long as possible.

We do need to redecorate all through our downstairs though. With several children and pets, the paint and carpets are most definitely rather tired now, peeling and fraying.

Ours is relatively nice at the moment because the house is only two years old. Although, things are starting to go wrong and it feels like the plumber has actually moved into our house permanently at the moment!.

Our old house was tired and old. It needed decorating but because it was a rental, we didn't want to fork out for it and neither did the tight fisted landlord. She sold it when we left and the people who bought it literally painted everything white. The wallpaper was about 30 years old. The kitchen was the same. They painted the cupboard doors and put new handles on them. They put some grey carpet in too and bumped £50k onto the price when they sold it on. I feel really sorry for the new owners TBH.

Don't believe everything on right move. It's like social media, all fake.

I've lived here nearly 6 years- replaced all bathrooms once, the kitchen twice (the first was shoddy and had a massive water leak), I repaint gradually through the year so everything is re-painted every 2-3 years and flooring is done as and when needed. I don't work and live in a listed building so there's always something that needs doing and I have the time to do it. I replace furniture and 'accessories' when needed- I don't like waste so no need for new stuff every 5 seconds

But I can very proudly say there's no grey paint, pops of colour or crushed velvet in the house!

My current house is because we bought a new build. My old house still had artex on the walls in the hallway lol there was just so much crapness I never knew where to start so I just didn't. Hence new build next time! So much easier to have a less shabby house when everything is new already!

It's still a shit tip though

I am attracted to lovely pristine rooms but cannot imagine being in a headspace where I could justify the headspace, time , money or environmental consequences of redecorating a room that didn't 'need decorating. In my world that woul be at least 15 years upstairs and about 12 downstairs.

Ours hasn't been decorated in 10 years and is not up to date at all. I don't like this show home fashion and it makes me feel nervous when people come round. Ours is clean but lived in and I love it

I don't think you can really tell from estate agent photos.
I'm in the process of selling my late mothers bungalow that's been rented out for years. It's tired and needs redecorating, ideally a new kitchen and bathroom although everything still works fine so someone could move straight in and do it later.

Tenants left it filthy (think you could draw lines in the grease in several parts of the kitchen kind of dirty) inside and out, I must have picked up 200 fag ends in the garden already and I've not finished yet. Everything overgrown- it looked shit. They didn't get their full deposit back.

Basically we're polishing a turd here, garden is still a work in progress but it is weeded and pruned and looking much better, the inside has been thoroughly cleaned, aired and doesn't stink of fried eggs any more. Professional oven cleaners are worth every penny by the way.

Honestly the estate agents photos made it look absolutely lovely. I'm still seeing bits inside that need cleaning light fittings thick with dust and working on the garden too, but I couldn't believe how nice it looks from the pics.

No, it's shit. We had a lot done within the first couple of years, new kitchen, windows, bathrooms etc, but now it all looks tired and we are debating whether to sell as is and just buy something better, or commit to staying a few years but we have very different ideas about spending money. DH is only happy replacing things when they've broken 🙄

Luckily my taste is eclectic and in some ways fairly timeless, so my old tat vintage furniture looks in keeping. The walls need repainting though, inside and out. They’re all plain white, so it’s cheap, but it’s such a bore.