Would you spend £7,500 on a handmade kitchen in a cheap terraced house?

[DaisytheStrange]

I live in a Victorian terraced house. The house has loads of character, but the road/area is not regarded as particularly 'desirable' (slightly tatty, though not awful), and the ceiling price for a house on our street would only be about £130,000. I've been quoted £7,500 for a lovely traditional handmade solid wooden kitchen, painted and with thick oak worktops. The price includes installation, (but not tiling, appliances etc.) The kitchen is a good/medium size.

My Dad thinks I shouldn't spend so much money on the project, as I'll never get it back when I sell it, and it's taken me a long time to save up so much money. We won't be able to move to a nicer area for at least 7 years though, until after the children have left school, so we'll have a long time to enjoy the kitchen. Also, the salesman told me the kitchen is "fully maintainable", so can be made to look as good as new again when the time comes to sell, unlike a cheap vinyl/chipboard kitchen.

So would it be extravagant and stupid to spend so much money on a kitchen in a house on a slightly tatty road with such a low ceiling price?

I've got a small terrace house with a top of the range Magnet kitchen, so it looks a bit nicer than b&q type flat pack kitchens. There's other stuff done to the house such as solid wood floors and expensive internal doors.

It might not add a lot of value to the house, but I think it will add a bit and also it will make your house very saleable when you do come to sell it.

My first house had a lovely kitchen and I sold it to the first people who looked at the house. They said as soon as they saw the kitchen they knew they had to have the house. That was a 70k, two bed terrace.

What I'm trying so badly to say is - do it in keeping with the house. Don't try and change the house by adding something like this.

Like if you are buying clothes for yourself - you look at your shape and your natural colours, and work with that, not stick some designer ideal on and hope for the best. You gotta work with what you've got, and make the best of it, not go top down.

I have a handmade kitchen that was fitte at Easter 2004. We have just sold our house to our second lot of viewers who remarked that the kitchen looked like new! We have put in a new wooden work top, sink and taps, this year, but the cupboards still look great. The work top, sink and taps we originally fitted were reclaimed so didn't look great, it now looks like a new kitchen.

We paid around £4000 just for the cupboards and fitting. I think you will get lots of pleasure out of a quality job, and it will still look good in 7 years, as I don't think it will date like an off the peg kitchen would.

Bloody hell that's cheap! I'm getting a new kitchen not handmade, small room for not much less than 15k! Inc appliances but not tiling.

Your other alternative is to buy cheap carcasses and get hand made doors. Which is what we did in our current home. B&q flat pack carcasses, b&q worktop, handmade doors. Kitchen is 9 years old and I think it still looks amazing. You get loads of choice, we had a bloke come round our house with samples and books and there were something like 200 different doors.

That sounds really cheap to me, I paid about £5k for a Honebase kitchen in a terrace house

Before you decide to go for it have house valued. Get agent to estimate value after kitchen.

That said, we've just done ours. Because we wanted too. And are not planning on moving for the next couple of years.

I'd say go for it. You'll enjoy the kitchen. Are there ways you can save money though? We got ours for £3600. Admittedly it's a b&q one and we took advantage of their sale and finance deal. But. We did a lot of the work ourselves (removing old one tiling etc - nothing you need to be qualified for-I have no issues getting grout up in my nails but won't touch plumbing or electrics).

Can you do this?

If I was planning on living in a house for 7+ years I wouldn't consider the cost of a project in terms of "getting my money back" but in terms of "making my life better while I live there".

Will you get £X worth of happiness out of it over the next 7 years (where £X is £cost-of-this-kitchen minus £cost-of-cheap-kitchen)?

Go for it. You could spend that on a couple of foreign family holidays and have nothing to show for it.

I'm a serial do-er upper (seem to move house a lot) and although kitchens are important for reselling I've found that a decent cheap kitchen (ikea are actually quite good surprisingly) combined with quality appliances and work tops (I like solid wood but stone etc looks fab too) do as good a job - if not better. Nice sink, taps, tiles/splash back, lighting far more important. Plus you're likely to get change over for bathroom/ carpet upgrade/ garden landscaping or holiday! Best of both worlds.
However if you really have fallen for the kitchen designed for you and you intend to stay a while then go for it

This is it Cleas - the one we're moving to has a basic kitchen but it is very simple and looks quite classy, Ikea style I suppose.

I also hate my oak worktops if I am honest.! I think I actually prefer laminate - if marble/granite isn't appropriate that is, and in our new place I don't think it will be.

You need a ground floor, high ceiling, large kitchen for that.