Kitchen renovations are a zero-sum game

Writing a few weeks ago in The Spectator, Toby Young slightly begrudged his wife’s decision to install a new kitchen in the Acton home they have shared for 15 years. As Toby explained, the original kitchen ‘had been done to quite a high standard in the style known as “Victoriana”, which meant William Morris wallpaper, antique-glass light shades and a small, dimly lit kitchen… This was the height of fashion in the late 1980s and will probably be bang-on trend again when we put the house back on the market in ten years’ time. But my efforts to persuade Caroline to wait out the fashion cycle came to nought.’

There’s nowt wrong with improving your home, and 30 years seems a reasonable lifespan for a kitchen, but Toby is being naively optimistic if he believes his expenses will be over once the kitchen is completed. They are just beginning. To misquote Walter in The Big Lebowski: ‘He is entering a world of pain. This is not ’Nam, this is home improvement. There are rules.’

Soon after the shiny new kitchen is installed, the rest of Toby’s home will look slightly dated by comparison. Hence the new kitchen will only act as a spur to further expenditure elsewhere, meaning Toby’s valiant attempts to pay down the mortgage will be endlessly thwarted by the acquisition of new carpets and sofas, a fancy shower-room and curtains. This will lead the family to depreciate their existing bedrooms, which are now noticeably dowdier than downstairs, meaning whole weekends will be lost to the discussion of thread counts and the endless comparison of barely distinguishable fabric samples. Toby and his wife would be better off cancelling their kitchen restoration and taking up opioids or crack instead.