Reply to Moved into house and husband doesn’t seem interested in doing house projects

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP consider breaking down your list into "maintenance" vs "aesthetics". All of the "I don't care" posters are dumping your concerns into the throw pillow category. Those posters may not care about pillows, but they sure as hell care if a toilet flushes. You can't live in a SFH with someone whose position is to "not care" about home maintenance. There's a place for those folks; it's called an apartment.

You'll have to adjust on the aesthetics (this often about money, btw, and what's considered necessary vs not). But HVAC, door knobs, plumbing, and electrical etc. are not optional items he gets to dump on you. I feel your disappointment re: someone who doesn't share your excitement. My H didn't either, and I had to get over that. But "getting over it" didn't mean accepting that maintenance was my job.[/quote]

As frustrating as it might seem, OP - you need to make two lists - “must do” maintenance tasks and “nice to do” aesthetic/decorating tasks.

Must do - toilet isn’t working or sink is stopped up, leak in the basement, outlet not working, etc.

Nice to do - wall art.

Then go over the lists with your DH, prioritize them and split them up.

Conflict will arise for things that you might see as “must do” (the basement, kids furniture) and he might think of as nice to do.  Break those down into smaller tasks and decide if they are a must do or a nice to do-  must dos are a place for your kid to sleep and put their clothes, books, and toys.   But a nice to do is having a themed mural.

If there’s a nice to do that he says he doesn’t care about and doesn’t want to do any work on, but you do, you can then say “okay, I’m going to handle this and I’ll stick to this budget, but if you want to have any say in how it turns out, you need to put in more effort than just saying no to what I suggest”

I’m a DW who is reasonably handy, but doesn’t like to commit to anything right away.  I’m also fine with being in a functional, but aesthetically boring/less than ideal place for a while so I can figure out how I want the space to work.

My DH is handy, but he struggles with long term planning and researching, loves hanging picture, and wants to tackle home projects ASAP.

So for me, if it’s not leaking, smoking, or overflowing, I’d like to wait a bit to see how things play out.   While he starts hanging pictures before we’ve even decided what furniture goes where!

After going through three moves and two renovations, we have made some progress on getting to a compatible place. Mostly by compromising when we make decisions - I now make them when I’m 80% sure, and he now waits a bit before rushing forth. [/quote]

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