Spending a lot of money on a house whilst the children are still young ?

[Hideehi]

Ours charge around on wheelie bugs etc, have been known to draw on walls and scuff furniture.
H and I are dying to buy a nice bathroom and kitchen spending about £40k which is a huge amount to us.
What age can children be expected to look after our things would you say ?

that's a lot for a kitchen and bathroom!

put the markers/pencils away and get them out when they want them - we haven't had any wall drawings from our girls 6, 3 and 1.. but do have a wheelybug and it's ok on the floors...

kids can be taught to look after things, but equally you can't be precious about your house if you have children

I agree, H wants the bees knees of a kitchen amtico floors etc
The kitchen alone came in at £20k and tbh once we'd seen that one everything else looked and felt cheap, even though they weren't at all.
My dilema if you like is whether to go for a £10k kitchen from say MFI and then replace it with the posh one in 10 years time, we aren't looking to sell the house but the other thing playing on my mind is do you spend £40k on a house where the road's ceiling price is £300k, we paid £230 but I wonder if we'd get the money spent back if we wanted to move at a later date.

you don;t get back what you pay for things, kitchens date, and often they are the first thing people change

it seems like an enormous amount of money to spend, and then you are going to be stressed out about the children scuffing things , and messing things up

IME kids can do a lot less damage to a bathroom (all those scrubbable and washable surfaces!) so why not have that done now and the kitchen in maybe a couple of years when the kids are out of the crayoning on walls phase?
I should think a 20k kitchen would be pretty indestructible, if you are looking at kitchens worth 20k now then MFI will just never do for you.
If you can afford it and its what you want, and you are thinking of staying where you are for the next 10 years, then get the kitchen you want and spend the money for your comfort and taste while you are there, not for what you might get back when you sell.

It is way too much given value of house / maximum possible value of house. People tend to buy a house and replace the kitchen.

That's a lot of money but go for it if you can afford it, esp. if not thinking of selling it. It would be worse if you spent all that in, say, 10 years, then decided to move out and never enjoyed the luxury yourselves.

Well I don't know we bought another house purely because we liked the kitchen and it was quite new and we didn't want the hassel of doing the work as I was pregnant.
But I do take the point, maybe H has to wait until we are in the forever house for his amtico floors lol

There's something called Karndean which is similar to Amtico but cheaper. It cost us about £4000 for a 3-bed flat (and we have enough left for the kitchen too when we replace the kitchen).

H is probably right about the Amtico though - it is meant to be tough and hardwearing , they use it in shops!
Lisa X

It's also very quiet - this was an important consideration for us. Also non-slipppery.