We raised out three kids in a largely original 1952 four bedroom, 1,600 sq ft ranch house. Everything was original. It had good bones, but very leaky windows, no insulation, bad roof, etc. We did a lot of upgrades along the way, but the kitchen was very worn out. One burner on the stove worked, bad Formica, bad fridge, dirty worn linoleum. It was gross. About ten years before retirement, we gutted it and rebuilt it figuring we wanted a nice kitchen after the last of the kids moved out. Fortunately we didn’t have to use a wayward child’s college fund to do it.
My point is you don’t know their situation. Would the old kitchen have worked in retirement? In our case, yes, but it reached the point where it was just gross and depressing.
We live in NYS.
A remodel here causes your property taxes to soar.
So we’ve gotten quite comfy with gross and depressing.