To ask how old is too old when it comes to kitchens?

[Porcupineintherough]

Warning: first world problem alert.

Please help me settle an argument with dh. We are the owners of a 1980s (maybe early 90s) kitchen. It is dated and getting a little tatty around the edges but still perfectly functional (years of life left in it according to dh).

I feel that we should save for a replacement and get it refitted in a year or two. He feels we should save but wait til bits start dropping off before replacing.

Does anyone else have a 30 year+ kitchen by choice? Will it ever give up the ghost? Admittedly I dont like it but replacement for replacements sake isnt generally my thing either.

Who spends more time in the kitchen? Eg if one of you is the cook the vast majority of the time or one of you spends hours at a time in there for other reasons ( IDK - eg working at the kitchen table) maybe that person’s opinion should carry more weight.

Ours is 22 years old (house newly built then) and its becoming a bit sad - drawers difficult to pull out etc. Wed change it in a heartbeat if we felt strongly but we dont. DH painted the original dark wood look cupboard a pale colour, which cheered the room up a lot, and replaced the handle thingies on the drawers. We also replaced the sink and tap, which changes the feel of the room. If you set aside environmental issues, then I think 30 years is quite old enough to have reached its end of life.

Depends on a bunch of things. It doesn't NEED replacing if it still works perfectly, but if it was tatty and unattractive it'd wind me up so it would be better to get a new one to stop me being ratty whenever I cooked (finances allowing)

And no I don't have a 30 year old kitchen I have a five year old kitchen... it is falling apart though. Bloody new builds

My MIL thinks a 1962 kitchen is perfectly ok still so you have a while to go. 😁

We never replaced ours but are slowly changing things: new sink and tap, induction instead of gas hob, and biggest change was to take off all doors and drawer fronts and replace them with plywood doors and new handles.

Mine is 40 years old. We had a joiner come and do some units and he said he remembered fitting the kitchen as one of his first jobs after school. One of the hinges had broke so he fixed it for us.
We are getting a new one, purely because the layout doesn't work. We've seen 10 or so kitchen companies though and despite being the best part of 30-40k for the kitchen (it's large), the quality is shocking.
Not sure I can face a £80k quote for a proper bespoke wooden one though.

Going to try DIY kitchens as I've heard good things.

We have a 31 year old kitchen, but fairly bottom of the range I would say. We could have cared for it better over the last 7 years but, we always thought we'd be changing it soon, and then something has come up and delayed it (we bought a new septic tank instead ).

I think if we wanted to keep it longer we could, with replacement hinges (saging), replacement handles (several are broken as they are cheap plastic handles), and removing and resealing between the worktops and tiles. However, the appliances are all at the ends of there lives, the switch and light on the extractor are broken, so it only has one power setting, oven has a hole in the bottom over the element, and we replaced the ceramic hob with an induction hob when we moved in.

Try painting it?

But if a new kitchen will make you happy tell your DH that - 30 years of life is a decent run.

@Porcupineintherough

Hmm, I dont think it was hugely high quality to begin with but it sure is tough. The finish is some kind of plasticky wood so I dont think it would be easy to repaint. Best thing about it is the layout which is brilliant, I'd copy that down to the last cupboard if we did replace.

If you are happy with the layout, this sounds like a great candidate for just replacing the doors & worktops which is much cheaper & more eco friendly

Like a PP I’m not into just ‘putting up’ with something you hate, esp if you can afford to replace. The eco side of things is a consideration and to me that’s a good compromise

Even some of the plasticky coated cupboards can be resprayed nowadays. That and a modern worktop and taps/handles can really bring it up to date, especially if the cupboards are solid.

Change the doors and worktops

Thanks all. I think I'm coming round to thinking a compromise solution - new doors, worktop and sink is the way to go. That should save a little bit of money, be better from the environment and make me happy. As a pp pointed out the person who uses it most maybe gets the casting vote and that's definitely me!

Mine is 24 years old and still in perfectly good nick, so it's not getting replaced any time soon. It looks a bit dated though.

It was made by a small local firm that's long since gone out of business, probably because the kitchens they made are so tough they last a very long time!

1980 Magnet kitchen. We've lived with it for 30 years and it's been fine, the appearance hasn't bothered me, I was happy that it was functional and inoffensive. Replacing it now as drawers falling apart (they've been repaired previously) and it does look very dated and a bit tatty. Feels like a bit of a waste of money, as it will still just be a kitchen. If the carcases were up to it, I'd have just replaced doors and worktops.

Bought our first house in the early 90’s. It was built in the 50’s with a nice kitchen that had never been changed, including one of the first integrated dishwashers (which was still fab) and some high quality wood cabinets. We moved before doing anything but when visiting later the new owners had done something like what the OP is planning and it worked very well.

There are supposed to be some good primers that will make it possible to paint cupboard doors. I think one is Zinzer brand but if you do a search online you will see what other DIYers recommend .

Ours is 19 years old and we’re replacing it this year. It could hobble on a bit longer but honestly I want to finish making our home ours as we plan to stay. Everyone will have different tolerance levels though.

Mine is 1970s. Hand built pine in the style of Smallbone.

I would like to replace the worktops at some point but they are not a standard size and there are a few complications.

Look at the frenchic forum on Facebook. You can use that paint on IKEA furniture so if your kitchen is wood it will be fine - you clean and sand first.

As Arti said zinsser bin primer is great too. Covers really well, I have used on shiny wood.

Really not sure about the doors taking paint. They have some sort of textured plasticized finish. But I will look.

Mine is from about 1990 and is fine. I hope it lasts for 20 or 30 years. It would be very very very well down the list of what to spend money on, same with the bathrooms of same vintage too. it is just not important to me.

Ours was a 1980s kitchen when we moved in 2005. We changed it within a few years mainly because the layout didn't work for us. The utility room is still 1980s and doesn't really offend me, because it's functional and I don't spend a lot of time in there.

I was amazed on here once when someone posted a link to a house and another poster said they "couldn't live" with the kitchen and would have to change it before they moved in. It was (what looked like) an early 2000s pale wood fairly bland kitchen.

My jaw dropped when I saw a post where someone said if they moved house they replaced the kitchen, bathrooms and carpets as a matter of course even if they were immaculate. Insanity.

Ours dates from the early 2000s; we recently painted the cabinets white (they had been gray) and replaced the hardware (drawer pulls, etc.) and the over-the-range microwave. Everything works fine, and we don't plan to remodel any time soon. But we wanted a cosmetic upgrade because it's open plan (I'm in the US) so it's actually part of our main living space. The relatively small amount of money we spent has made a huge difference.