LL installed new kitchen

[Casperthefriendlygh]

We experienced significant disruption despite the promise of no 'lack of function':

• 3 days no oven, 3 days no hob
• 6 days no dishwasher, 6 days no washing machine
• 9 days no sink, 9 days of high noise
• 14 days of reduced living space due to storage
• This has led to health risks, unlivable conditions, and a breach of the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, with issues like damp, drainage problems, and difficulty maintaining sanitation.

So you deliberately made lives harder for yourself so you had more to whinge about at the end and could try to get more money off? Think you’re on the wind up now!

@PrincessofWells no wind up. Can show you before and afters if you like

What does your lease say? I am a landlord and would not do this to a tenant. I would have waited until the lease ended and then renovated the kitchen before the next tenancy started. We've had to re-paint the flat and we did this between tenancies so as not to disturb our tenants.

Landlords are universally hated on MN so if people are siding against you they really must think you are unreasonable!

Same. I'd love a new kitchen. Fat chance of that happening.

Do you or your housemates have any friends who are solicitors?

I think your LL should suck up the £500 reduction. What she offered was paltry in light of the disruption and expense you've been put through.

In the end she's the one who benefits because she has an improved property (what she did went far beyond amelioration of a leak) but you are all stuck with increased food costs and had to deal with hygiene problems.

Did you take her up on the air fryer offer?

Op said there was a leak. Sometimes things happen. I had a leak behind a shower so had to remove tiling and the plasterboard wall had to be replaced then retiled which was messy and inconvenient for the tenant, but nothing else I could have done.

2 weeks is nothing. We were on a building site, same as you It's a 3 bed, 1 bath, 1 living room - with 3 kids, one aged 1, and WFH, for 6 months. Had to walk dirty dishes round the whole outside of the house to get from air fryer/eating area to temporary sink. It really wasn’t that stressful.
Your kitchen was ‘kind of OK but had a leak’ - no doubt you would complain about that if LL hadn’t sorted it? New kitchen and no rent increase. Sounds fair!

@mathanxiety no unfortunately no solicitors
she couldn't get to the leak without taking off the worktops and then decided to do everything and even replace the floor as well

Honestly you sound like you’re either being totally pathetic or you’re just blatantly money grabbing.

Yes it’s disruptive when maintenance has to be done, but if you want to live somewhere with things like kitchens and bathrooms then it’s just part of life. It would have been much more disruptive to your lives if you’d had to find somewhere else to live so the work could be done while the the property was vacant.

Leaks in a kitchen can cause massive damage especially if it was going on for a long time unnoticed. Mould can grow behind units, worktops damaged, cupboards swelling and disintegraing etc. It's not unusual to have to replace a whole kitchen.

when does the rental agreement expire ?
are you intending on renewing it / do you think the ll will want you to renew it ?
do you think the ll will be renewing it ?

Brand new kitchen and you haven't paid a penny, yay!
Yes suck it up

We signed a 2 year fix contract which expires march 2026

Was this contract verbal?

@mathanxiety No we didn't take her up on her airfryer offer or her offer to buy us a takeaway on the 1st night

In what alternative world were you ever going to be able to have a whole kitchen removed and refitted without it causing loss of function, noise, dust and the need for people to be there to do the work.

If you really are 3 functional and competent women living in the flat how did you think that work was going to happen in a completely disruption free way?

The kitchen had a leak, in order to get to the leak they had to remove big sections of the kitchen, the only viable options at that point are:

• put back the wet kitchen and hope it dries out well and doesn't go mouldy
• replace the kitchen.

The landlord chose the second option which was the better choice because now it's done, and hopefully will need no further work for several years, as opposed to putting back the old kitchen which would likely have needed further work if it did go mouldy.

@theemptinessmachine she wrote in an email "no loss of any functionality of the kitchen"

I think asking for a £500 discount on rent is unreasonable because I don’t really understand where it comes from, like you’ve just plucked £500 out of the air? But if your costs were increased in the two weeks then you could ask for your rent to be reduced by that amount. Although honestly I don’t think what you’ve described is bad at all.

@PippyPip Our recommendation for the reduction is based off number of days critically affected (11 days) and the cost per day of rent / 2 (£97 / 2 = £48.50). £48.50 x 11 = £533.50
As such, this would bring the payment due on November 1st to £2,366.50.

OP, you are getting a hard time here.

You didn't need a new kitchen other than the leak occuring. Two weeks may not be long if it's your own home and you are choosing to have the kitchen done, but when you are paying rent it's a bit shit.

I don't think £500 off £2,900 is too much for your landlord to forego. It's 50% rent reduction for the two weeks you were inconvenienced.

If you own your own house, you’d know a kitchen regularly takes longer than 2 weeks to install. You put up with building noises and kitchen cabinets stack in your own house. Would you rather the LL kick you out first?

And I'm a landlord...

@DozyBugger thanks! We had literally hardly an autonomy at all. It's a disempowered place to be in.

You can certainly ask for a rent reduction if you wish to. Do you think that the landlord will and what will you do if they don’t?