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There are many coverings that can be used as floors in children’s rooms. When buying, you should note that children like to romp and play. The floor in the children’s room should also be healthy.

Floors to romp about

Children perceive their floor with at least four senses: they can see immediately whether they like the color and structure. You can feel whether it is hard or soft, cold or warm, has a good grip or is slippery and whether it cushions your jumps. You smell when it evaporates. You hear when he makes noises. It’s best for parents to do the same before choosing a floor covering for the children’s room: listen, sniff, take off your shoes and don’t forget to jump!

The children’s room floor made of cork

Children like to jump off the table or bunk bed. A cork floor made of air-filled cells cushions, thus protecting the joints and relieving the spine. Barefooters like the good thermal insulation of cork , and people with sensitive hearing are happy that it absorbs sound and footsteps. The floor for the children’s room is available on the roll, as a tile and in many colours. Cork floors, which are glued over the entire surface, are made of one layer and made entirely of pressed cork or have two layers of veneer. By the way, this flooring grows on a tree. Cork oaks are carefully peeled by hand, their trunks remain intact. The bark grows back until it is harvested again nine years later. Cork oaks can live up to 200 years.

Cork parquet as floor

Ready-made parquet consists of cork veneer, which is usually glued to wood fiber boards with tongue and groove. If you lay the cork floor floating, i.e. without gluing it to the subfloor, you save the preparation of the subfloor and thus time. You can leave the finished parquet floor sealed ready for use and put the furniture away again straight away. Another advantage is that it can be removed again. A floor made of ready-made parquet is therefore an ideal floor for tenants. You can move from apartment to apartment with him.

Sealing and cleaning of cork floors

The cork surface is treated with oil, wax or varnish. This surface seal prevents dirt and dust from penetrating and makes the floor durable and easy to care for. Cork floors can be sanded down and resealed if they ever need a makeover – provided they aren’t too flimsy. To keep them clean, all you need is a broom or vacuum cleaner and a slightly damp cloth.

The floor in the children’s room made of rubber

Rubber is obtained from the sap of the tropical rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis). As a floor covering, it is extremely hard-wearing and non-slip, has a high level of footfall sound insulation and is easy to wash off. This is particularly beneficial when the children spontaneously show an interest in painting and begin to be creative on the floor. Rubber floors are available in all colors, the surface structure ranges from nubbed to smooth.

Linoleum as a children’s room floor covering

Everyone knows linoleum flooring from gyms. The floor covering is particularly popular here because of its slip resistance and durability. However, linoleum is also used more and more in living spaces. The fabric is now also available in beautiful colors – even as ready-made parquet in plank and cassette format. Hard fiber boards have a linoleum layer about two millimeters thick, and the cork underside serves as heat and footfall sound insulation. Linoleum is obtained or cooked from natural raw materials such as linseed oil, tree resin, wood flour, limestone powder, color pigments and jute.

Wooden floor for the children’s room

Every wooden floor is unique. It creates a comfortable atmosphere, cushions the walk, is robust, regulates moisture and does not become electrostatically charged. Dust can also be easily removed from its smooth surface. Dust mites have to find another home, much to the delight of residents with allergies . Children can play all year round on a wooden floor, even without stockings. The wood stores heat and dissipates little, so the floor always feels warm to the feet.

The classics are solid floorboards or parquet floors . In the living area, they are screwed or nailed to a wooden beam ceilingor a false floor. If they are laid on concrete, you need support battens as an intermediate structure – fully bonded to screed, wooden floors are only used in public spaces with very high loads. Solid wood is extremely durable; worn floors can be sanded and resealed several times to look like new. However, this only becomes necessary after several decades. When it comes to choosing wood, the budget is also a deciding factor: Common floor woods are, for example, beech, maple and oak.

Treatment and maintenance of wood

Wood surfaces are sealed with oil and wax to keep dirt and moisture out. Alternatively, paint can also be used. For the sake of health, however, people tend to choose products without organic solvents. Oiled and waxed wooden floors have the advantage over varnished ones that annoying scratches or notches can be repairedcan be done without completely renovating the floor. Sealed wooden floors can be easily cleaned with a broom or vacuum cleaner. Pippi Longstocking pours a kettle of water on the floor, ties scrubbing brushes to her feet and slithers across the room until the floor is clean, leaving the sun to dry. Wiping is easier with a slightly damp cloth. Miss Longstocking’s amount of water would do more harm in the long run.

Ready-made wooden parquet

Ready-made parquet and other industrially manufactured flooring elements are alternatives. They cost less than solid wood floors and are quicker to install. They are considered to be dimensionally stable, but can only be sanded down once or twice. Its three-layer structure is reminiscent of a sandwich: the top layer consists of three to four millimeters thick fine wood, which lies on a middle layer and a bottom top layer made of inexpensive wood material or softwood. Due to this structure, the floor “works” less to lay parquet. They float on the screed or glue it with a parquet adhesive that is as solvent-free as possible. A glued floor is very difficult to remove. Another advantage of floating floors is that they have little room to maneuver and hardly give way. They are therefore good for the feet and the entire musculoskeletal system – ideal as a floor covering in the children’s room.

OSB panels as flooring in the children’s room

OSB panels (oriented strand boards) have an unusual visual appearance: They are made of coarse shavings (strands) aligned lengthwise, crosswise and again lengthwise, pressed and glued. Formaldehyde-free glued, sanded panels, which can be bought in specialist wood shops, are suitable for children’s rooms. Thanks to their tongue and groove profile, they can be installed floating. In order to make them barefootable and easy to care for, you should definitely paint, wax or oil OSB boards . Like floorboards, OSB panels only need to be vacuumed or swept and wiped with a damp cloth. Children find this floor covering in the children’s room as warm to their feet as other wooden floors.

Laminate floor in the children’s room

Laminate consists of a carrier layer (usually medium-density fibreboard), decorative laminate and a wear-resistant synthetic resin coating. Once the top layer has worn off, it cannot be restored. Laminate floors sometimes crackle when you walk on them, which can bother sensitive ears. Because they feel cool, they need a partner in the children’s room – for example, a wool rug that children can stay on the ground longer.

Carpet floor in the children’s room

Children like to go barefoot, and that’s a good thing: they can leave their slippers in the corner as long as their feet stay warm and don’t slip. Indestructible carpets that are warm, feel good and are easy to care for are suitable as flooring for the children’s room: For example, low-pile, i.e. “short-haired” carpets from the roll or in the form of tiles. The latter are particularly suitable for the children’s room, because mishaps often happen here: loosely laid carpet tiles can be easily replaced. Individual carpets made of wool also look good in the children’s room. Sometimes the child crosses the oceans as a pirate captain and sometimes it conquers the skies.

Comfortable carpets made of wool

There are also comfortable carpets made of polyacrylic, polyester and other chemical fibers, natural carpets made of coconut and sisal. Children’s room residents should be able to stay on the carpet often and for a long time, so it is best to use the material that is also good for the body, namely wool. Wool from sheep is skin-friendly, soft and warm. Wool from goats, on the other hand, feels firmer, but otherwise has the same properties as new wool. As carpeting, it can absorb a lot of moisture and release it back into the room air. Wool stores heat, insulates noise and does not become electrostatically charged. So you don’t get a knock on the doorknob, because the carpet is so conductive that it can reduce voltage differences.

New wool fibers are curled in a spiral and are therefore very elastic. Regardless of whether you stretch or compress them, they spring back to their original shape like springs. Thanks to their high elasticity, wool carpets are easy on the joints and very hard-wearing – they recover easily from furniture pressure points, for example.

Wool is naturally insensitive to dirt, as its own fat layer envelops and protects the fibres. Even spilled liquid can penetrate only slowly. Dirt particles stick to the surface until the vacuum cleaner sucks them up. Sparkling mineral water will help remove stains.

Carpet tiles

There are carpet tiles made of goat hair and new wool that are laid loose without glue – in more than 40 colors. A plastic foam coating weighs down these “self-laying” tiles (Tretford). So you can equip the children’s room with very individual mosaics. Unfortunately, loose laying is only suitable for rooms that are no larger than 20 square meters.

If you want to build a house, you have to deal with the house construction costs in detail. Not only because you could otherwise lose track of the construction costs, but also because you can save a bit on the overall costs. Below you will find a list of all the house building costs.

Whether you want to know the cost of construction in Kenyan urban areas or in rural Kenya, this guide will give you a clear picture of what you should expect to part with. Town and rural construction costs will not be the same if everything else is the same. For instance, construction materials tend to be cheaper in the city than in the rural areas but the total cost of construction in Kenya favors those in the rural areas than those building in cities. Why? In rural Kenya, labour is cheap and people tend to use some locally available resources, eliminating some of the costs.

In the year 2022, the construction costs in Kenya average from Ksh34,650 per square metre to Ksh77,500 per square metre. You should also note that a simple mabati house structure will cost you around Ksh 350,000.

Costs for a new building in Kenya: overview and comparison

Anyone dreaming of owning their own property inevitably asks themselves: How much house can I afford? Because the cost of building a house can quickly shatter the dream. The answer to that depends on many factors. One of the most important is and will always be the type of house you want to build. And it’s not just about the question of whether you want a modern or a classic house – it’s more important to look at the shell and the construction. Also because certain types of house can only be built on certain plots of land, possibly only with a basement, at least a partial basement, and therefore cost more than others that stand on a floor slab. The home classics are still solid houses, architect houses or developer houses. Container houses are still the exception – and they in particular create a more cost-effective alternative to conventional living situations. Also because they can be built on small plots of land, for example in vacant lots. Since both wood and sand, insulating materials, mineral oil products and reinforcing steel have risen sharply in price in the recent past, information on house construction costs can only be snapshots at the moment. Prices are likely to rise even faster in the coming months, making it more and more expensive to build a house . Or do you want to build an apartment building?

If you are planning and building a prefab house, you will quickly notice that the house construction costs for a prefab house are not much lower than for a stone house, because both in terms of quality and the degree of possible individualization, the prefab house manufacturers have in the past ten years caught up.

Cost of a tiny house in Kenya

Overall, a tiny house is cheaper than a regular house – but the construction costs per square meter are comparatively high. The main reason for this is that a tiny house has significantly less square meters than an average single-family house: namely only between 17 and 50 square meters. In this case, you also need a smaller plot of land or, if you want a mobile home and don’t want to bother with the building permit for tiny houses, you don’t need your own plot of land at all. But the total cost of building a house is divided by fewer square meters for a tiny house. And when it comes to interior design, a tiny house can of course also become a stylish space miracle by installing high-quality equipment or space-saving custom-made products. For around 1,000,000 euros you get a tiny house kit that you can assemble and set up yourself. Ready to move in cheap tiny houses are usually between Ksh3,500,000 and Ksh8,000,000 with an average of 28 square meters – i.e. between 125,000 and 200,000 Kenyan shillings per square meter.

What do house building costs in Kenya depend on?

The cost of building a house in Kenya depends on many factors and no two houses are the same. Therefore, it is always very difficult to give precise information about house construction costs. Some of the cost items are obvious, such as the property, the type of home, the roof, the basement, the size and amenities of your dream home, and the quality of the materials used. Others are less obvious and builders tend to forget them. We therefore recommend that you roughly calculate the costs of building a house well in advance: the house building costs also include the excavation work , the outdoor facilities and the ancillary construction costs. The costs also vary depending on the number of windows and doors, the heating.

When building a house in Kenya, costs also depend very much on the region in which you want to build. Starting with property prices and the associated follow-up prices for the property through to wages of the craftsmen you employ on your construction site. If you are flexible in terms of work, you can save tens of thousands of shillings in house construction costs with the location alone. Builders can also save some costs by doing their own work when building a house. The less you can do yourself, the more expensive your house will be.

Ancillary construction costs in Kenya are not insignificant

Calculating ancillary construction costs correctly is not an easy task, also because you have to keep an overview of all expenses – after all, around 22 percent of the house construction costs flow into the ancillary construction costs. They include the costs for the notary, possibly a broker’s commission, the land transfer tax, the measurement of the property, any tree felling work, the building surveyor, the building permit, the development costs, the construction site equipment, various insurances for builders, the layout of the garden, the garden paths as well as the construction of the terrace , the carport or the garage and the paving of the driveway. Not to forget the costs to move to the new home and housewarming party.

financing costs

For most homeowners, owning a house is the most expensive purchase of their life. But you can also save a few euros when it comes to construction financing . If you carefully plan your own contributions, you can include a so-called muscle mortgage in the loan negotiations. Low interest rates on loans and high repayment flexibility are two other ways to save on building construction costs. One thing is clear: the more equity you have, the less money you have to borrow and the cheaper it is to build a house. But even those who want to take out a higher loan can save interest by carefully comparing. The LBS mortgage lending calculator provides you with further information .

Brokerage fees are tax -deductible as income-related expenses if you bought your building plot through a brokerage agency. The purchase of the property and the construction of the house should be split into two contracts – because this way real estate transfer tax can be saved . If you have already officially moved into the house and then have work done by craftsmen, you can deduct the wage portion of the bills for tax purposes and get back up to 120,000 shillings a year.

Personal contribution as a savings option

Skilled craftsmen, together with their family and friends who help with the construction, can reduce the costs of building a house by doing their own work and thus build a little more cheaply. But be careful: You should only do this after consulting the professionals and only for things that you really trust yourself and your helpers to do. Shoddy construction will later cost you dearly as the builder and you will live in a nightmare house instead of your dream house. In principle, you should choose simple activities and think carefully about how much time you have to work on the construction site. Insulating heating pipes, painting, wallpapering, laying tiles, laying laminate, plastering – these are the classic jobs that builders use to reduce house building costs through their own work. The attic conversion, especially if you do not need the room immediately, and the garden can be done as a personal contribution to reduce the costs of building the house in Kenya.