Kitchens - men's V women's views

socks_uk

Our family have been viewing a few houses recently (on the web & actually visiting them) and some of them have fairly decent kitchens but a couple of them have a kitchen probably from early/mid 80's.
The house I really like (location, layout etc.) has a fairly old kitchen in it but functionable. We have money for things like bathroom/kitchen but my husband asked me why the kitchen is so important to me?

To me the kitchen is extremely important as I guess it'll be just like now where it'll be ONLY me that bothers to cook in it or attempt to clean it!

Is it just him or do other men think women should work (because of course it IS work after all! on top of the 45 hrs a week paid work) in a kitchen that resembles a mechanic's garage?

Any other thoughts on this I can show him?

Thanks,
Jill

dooj

The kitchen is the heart of the home and therefore is most important. When i moved house last year i knew i wanted a new kitchen and the old 80's style one out straight away. several people including my mum said i should just make do with the kitchen as it was for the time being and give it a good clean, however i was adamant that the old one should come out and new one should go in and i was glad i made this decision as once we started to pull kitchen apart we came accross an infestation of food eating beetles which we would not have found out about unless we pulled kitchen out. Anyway more than a year on we have a nice new clean beetle free kitchen which me and OH chose and designed layout of, as a consequence he enjoys nothing more than getting in there and cooking up all kinds of delicious meals. so if that ist reason enogh to get a new kitchen then i dont know what is.

Ian_W

Jill,
Simple answer [call me old fashioned, unreformed, sexist, blah, blah] women decide on the house. So if the kitchen isn't up to scratch tell your old man to forget it.

When Mrs W says, "we can move straight in" I know it's the right house, despite the fact we'll spend the next 12 months [and several £000's] revamping it. She can, however, see past a tired old kitchen and imagine a branny in it's place - much to the delight of our tame kitchen fitter and the distress of the bank balance!!

BoL.

GDB2222

I vote for a new kitchen. My only thought is whether you can live with the existing kitchen for a while? If so, it might influence your thoughts on designing a new one.

Becky

Since suffering from vile neighbours at a previous property things like horrible coloured walls, or non-plastered areas on a wall mean little or nothing to me.

The house we are in now has some horrible carpets but I can certainly live with these things.

As long as the kettle has a plug socket to fit into I would not worry about the kitchen!! :rotfl:

socks_uk wrote:

Is it just him or do other men think women should work (because of course it IS work after all! on top of the 45 hrs a week paid work) in a kitchen that resembles a mechanic's garage?

Any other thoughts on this I can show him?

I have one. Put milk in his tea that has lived in an airing cupboard for several weeks.

jezza1O1

I picked out our 1st rented flat as my partner lived many miles aways and was unable to view before coming down. Place was lovely victorian conversion, good price, top location, etc, etc.

I didnt even look in the kitchen, now in hindsight this was clearly a beginner boy mistake. And although the misses was 'nice' about the whole thing, it was made very clear that my choice wasnt satifactory and eventually the slow grinding nagging that only women can do got the better of me and we soon moved. Our next place had a brand new luxury kitchen.

And we both lived happily ever after .


True.

socks_uk

Thanks for all your thoughts...

I just think I'd rather put in a brand new kitchen on this house in a lovely location near the seaside than inherit a 'nice' kitchen that someone else has chosen.

I can see potential in this property, he sees it as 'more work to do'. Not that this should be a problem because I'm the DIYer in our house.

Jill

GDB2222

I've thanked you for that post Jezza. What you did was so sensible, yet so wrong!

Norma_Desmond

My husband's the 'chef' in our house, and it's always been his ambition to design a kitchen from scratch - and after buying our house a year ago, we're now almost ready to take a sledgehammer to our old kitchen. Frankly I couldn't give two hoots what it's like, as to me it's just a functional room where you prepare food, so whilst I've got a free rein over the rest of the house, it's his job to do everything regarding the renovation and installation of the new one! I loathe and despise cooking anyway and we've got a separate dining room.......so the least time I spend in there the better IMHO!

seabiscuit_2

Having lived with a 80's style kitchen since we moved in here 3 years ago - that we had every intention of gutting and getting a new one - this never happened to due to lack of time, money and energy

when we started house hunting - i didnt care about carpets, wall colouring, i cared that we got a decent NEW kitchen - on the basis that whatever is there now, is most likely to be there when we move out :-]