How do you decide how much money to spend on decorating your house?

[Newhousecrying]

We have been in the house a few months and discussing a new kitchen design for when we have enough money. options are to design exactly what we want with more units and mostly drawers (expensive) or do it as cheap as possible. this lead to talking about how much we should plug into the house.

we don’t know if we’ll stay in the house long term. Size and location currently ok for us. When the neighbours are not being awful with noise it’s not bad. I’d like a slightly bigger house with a bigger eat in kitchen but we don’t need one. We don’t have plans for children in the near future (at least another 3 years if ever). if we stay here and have no children we’ll be mortgage free before 45 years. old.

a friend said with her first house she knew it wouldn’t be a forever house so refused to spend anything but the bare minimum. But she thinks that was the reason she hated that house while she lived there and after and it took a long time to sell.

would love your thoughts on getting this balance

Personally, I spend money on improvements that will add value long-term.

And all improvements (like new bathroom) are neutrally completed, ie no strong colours, keeping loosely on trend.

I always start with the house maintence though - so gutters, electrics, windows, boiler etc if they need attention get sorted first.

It's definitely worth keeping your house in good condition and decorating/updating tastefully/neutrally, you'll add value and saleability. And you get the benefit of enjoying it while you live there.

I think if you are going to do more than a coat of paint do it properly or you risk ending up doing it twice and then the cost spiral. You can actually get a lot of good kitchens off ebay and maybe pay for the few extra units you need to adapt it to your home, or new doors but recycle carcuses. If doing it properly means you do it slower then fine, but in many houses it's not much more than a kitchen and bathroom that need more than paint and carpet. Also think what you need to do that might mean you'd need to do things again - it didn't cost much to pull a ceiling down and push in insulation but then we had to redecorate, so we did that twice, wish we'd done that earlier. Do you need to rewire, do new windows etc, I suggest you do all of those types of things early.

Thanks both.

we’ve done the rewire. The roof and repointing is next. And then kitchen. The windows would be good to do.

im keeping an eye out on eBay for kitchens.

Honestly, do not buy a secondhand kitchen off eBay you end up trying to make the kitchen work for what you’ve bought rather than what you’ve bought work for the kitchen that you have. It’s just not worth it

Does it have to be perfect or nothing? With a kitchen, you could choose a style you really like, and then make some sensible compromises, like a mixture of cupboards and drawers. You could also stay within a sensible budget by installing good quality bottom units only and maybe just going for simple shelfs on top for now until you know more about your future plans.

@Angeldelight81 I’m keeping an eye out but we have quite a small kitchen so have very specific requirements. I know a few people who got good kitchen second hand. I think eBay is so luck based!

@NellyBarney thanks. I’ll have a think of some ‘in between’ designs. Right now I have one which is better than what we have but could do with more storage and a second design which has nearly all drawers in the bottom and a custom larder!