How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

So ideally you would do the reno before or after baby not during...

Personal thoughts:

Seeing the mess our child has made of this awful awful house in the four months we’ve been here has definitely put me off doing anything too nice to it for the foreseeable, as much as I physically feel the need to do so as I walk around the place. Doubly so due to our impending second hit. Well all those reasons and the crippling poverty the place and nursery fees have put us in.

But follow-on question is ‘if not now, when?’. When is it ‘safe’ to do it? The longer you wait the less value you get from it, and I can’t imagine 2 kids under ten are any more gentle than the one 18 month old we’ve got, and I’m not sure I can tolerate the compromises this place has for a decade.

TL; DR: goodbye HM and Dinesen, hello IKEA and laminate and fml.

How are they going to look once you drill them for stair gates?

How badly are they going to fuck up...

My 2p is that kids will find and fuck your shit up so I would definitely be going the more practical route on everything and chose stuff that will look OK when knocked about and dented.

But follow-on question is ‘if not now, when?’. When is it ‘safe’ to do it?

Obviously kids of any age are going to fuck stuff up. But <5yo are just so fucking aggressive with everything. Plus they have all these wheely toys that fuck your floor, and drag shit everywhere. So I would have that as a decorating horizon.

Also although I often say this in jest, it's a serious comment; get some high up cupboard style storage designed in. The amount of shit we have put up on any high surface makes me despair.

It partly depends how much energy you want to invest in stopping them fucking it up.

Our plan is to just let stuff get a bit fucked up until about age 5 and then redecorate.

Any floor is going to need a degree of maintenance @Tenderloin. Dinesen is used in a number of restaurants/shops/galleries so I wouldn’t be overly concerned on a general wear and tear front, but you will need to keep on top of cleaning with a floor soap which they will happily sell to you for £30ish a tub. White oiled floors inevitably look grubbier than a darker finish quicker, but it will have that sweet aesthetic you are after so swings and roundabouts.

What I will say is that Dinensen is eyewatering expensive, and even more so on retrofit projects where existing substrate levels (floors/stairs) are a little off. I worked on a project in 2019(ish) where Dinesen ash with a white oil finish was specified. 40sq.m in total including overcladding a new staircase came in at about £345sq.m supply and install, and I believe the supply cost of their ash flooring has gone up since.

Dinensen douglas fir is only available as a solidwood which is also pretty chunky at about 30mm which will also need considering at threshold points (junctions with other floors), and with any existing skirting boards/doors you are planning on keeping.

Clearly, it looks amazing but buyer beware and all that. Ted Todd do an engineered douglas fir which will help with the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs above. Will need a white oil soap maintenance as the 1st.