Do family members count? :)

Jiggreen, you stinker! That was MINE! :-)

Okay, apparently a bunch of us have family members we'd like to get rid of...........wonder how many of those are spouses? I can relate. We are just getting started on a porch project and half way thru the day today I was picturing DH buried in the back yard up to his neck in dirt. Unable to move BUT having to listen to every word I said. Sad part is we haven't even started the physical part of the job just the talking it thru part.

Oh, Carol, that is hilarious - and the timing!!! Last night DH & I were watching DIY network, "renovation realities"... Usually that show, (& the others, except 1!), just tick me off. But the homeowners bickering is always SO familiar! This episode was practically a mirror-bicker of one of our projects last year! Totally different project - but the "lift it up!", "lift WHAT up to where?", "lift your side UP", "you mean just up?", "I said UP! How is that complicated?!?", "up, & turn it to the wall, you mean?", "JUST LIFT IT UP!!!". OMGosh, we both just laughed!
Nothing like home-projects to bring spouses closer...(To filing divorce papers! Lol).

Lavender - we've hijacked your post, and haven't even answered your question once! So sorry! FTR, I can't think of one, yet, but I might. :-)

I love my spouse, but if I see him coming in my direction to 'help' I quit and take a break. It's a guaranteed confrontation unless I let him take over, and then bite my lips till they bleed. And yes, we seem to agree on a common outcome, but not one thing along the way in methods are compatible. Doesn't help if he's O/C and I'm just the opposite. I let the clutter accumulate and then clean up after the job, and he has little buckets and vacuums and tidies up as he works. arg. Or more likely tries to get me to do it for him. And yes, it's the communication thing. He'll ask for a certain tool (he never gathers tools before the job, but prefers using gophers) and then will give the wrong name to it and then get frustrated when I actually bring him back what he asks for. LOL.

LOL! I think this might be a more important topic :)

Happened just today! DH and I were cleaning up the garage after emptying out a storage shed. Mostly it entailed moving fairly large pieces of furniture up to the second floor.

"lift it up!", "lift WHAT up to where?", "lift your side UP", "you mean just up?", "I said UP! How is that complicated?!?", "up, & turn it to the wall, you mean?", "JUST LIFT IT UP!!!"

ks toolgirl....were you there? listening? :-) only thing is....he sometimes doesn't even answer my questions....just does his thing and it is up to me to guess what we are doing. My usual refrain is ..."talk to me...tell me what we are doing". Really drives me crazy as I am a teacher and used to giving direction. A teacher he is NOT!

lavender...now on to the subject! When we originally bought our home, we planned to build a garage. Even measured to be sure we could build the size garage we wanted and checked with city hall. We did not build the garage right away, took almost 8 years. But over that time we totally changed our ideas and built a garage that fit our home and time period (1800's)so much better than what we would have built originally. Also built it in a different location than we had originally planned. So we are very glad we didn't do that! (build the garage when we first moved in)

I bought 1,600 sf of quality laminate flooring to replace wall-to-wall on the first floor. It's now in the garage waiting to go on Craigslist. I decided this house's best and highest use is as landfill--after first being stripped of usable bits 'n pieces by Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

Carol_from_ny, love the "buried in backyard up to the neck" idea... I'll be using that image myself I think! I'll be adding a PAPER bag to plop over his head - it would never work if I could still see his eye-rolling - lol!
I think this all explains why DH never "needs help" anymore, lol! "Can I give you a hand?", "Nope, I think I've got it, thanks tho'". This as he's trying to get a full sheet of drywall, or a bed frame, up the stairs - navigating the 90 degree bend 1/2 way up.
Mary_lu, close call on the garage! That's a good example of why everyone says "wait a while & get a feel for the house first", wish I had... Which reminds me-->
Lavender - ooh! I've got one! I'm SO glad I didn't go deeper into debt right after we bought the house by putting vinyl siding on her! Oh, wait... I DID do that? Not a bad dream? Dammitall anyway. Lol. I AM glad that after DH insisted on replacing 1 set of windows, I put the kibosh on any more, EVER - And I saved the old ones. As far as I'm concerned, the vinyl's are just a really great way to seal up the windows until I get around to restoring the old ones. (Lol - maybe when those are done, the pe11a's can just be moved around to the other windows as I work on them! "Musical chairs", with plastic windows?). :-)

Yikes so many husband-bashing women here....ok whatever...to each their own.

For me it was NOT replacing the 22 old double-hung windows in the 1865 farmhouse that I bought 10 years back...despite everyone telling me I was crazy and should install the "new super argon low E triple pane yada yada yada..." windows that would cut my heating bill in half. Yeah right...the house is 150 years old, the difference in heating bills between having super windows and restored and properly maintained double-hungs with good storms is negligible...in order to see any savings in the neighborhood of what the window people claim, I would have had to replace all the doors, re-insulate the entire place, etc.

My restored double-hungs are beautiful and get lots of comments. Yes it took a lot of work, but I did it myself and took my time. Maintenance is maybe an hour per year for each window. Plus, I love the idea of looking thru a piece of [wavy] glass that someone looked thru while wondering when this damn civil war was gonna finally end....puts things into a different perspective from a time point of view.

Hate seeing people move into a home and immediately rip out the old windows that have lasted generations...only to put in cheapo vinyl replacements that will be in a landfill in 20 years....big pet peeve of mine...

Mkroopy, please don't take offense! :-)
I'm sure my fellow "bashers" are like myself... Adore their husbands - I certainly do. It's all meant in the spirit of good-natured fun - & my DH will get a huge kick out of my comments. Working on projects together can cause couples to "butt heads" occationally, in our case - lol - it's because we take turns actually being "The Butt-head"!
No serious "bashing" intended! Men are awesome.

Btw - that's a pet-peeve of mine too... (Now). "If you want new windows, buy a new HOUSE". :-)

I wish I had something to add to the original post. DH takes a VERY long time in making up his mind about things which with a old house can be good. It's kept us from doing anything we've regretted so far,other than buying the old girl.......we've all had days when we've said or at least thought that in passing.

PO's put in all new vinyl windows months before putting the house on the market. :(
Now that's just mean.

I am glad we didn't do several things. We had BIG PLANS when we bought the house (a 1920's bungalow), but (un)fortunately we didn't have the money to follow through - I am so glad now!

Husband wanted to replace ALL the windows. We did the ones on the second story, that were themselves awful 1960's aluminum, so I don't regret that. But I'm SO GLAD that we didn't do the weighted, double hung with storms original windows on the main floor! Husband and I still fight about it, he insists that new fancy ones would save us money. Well, guess what - the pins holding the frame of the fancy new (expensive!) ones upstairs gave way yesterday, less than two years old. Hubby is going after manufacturer via warranty, but I am enjoying rubbing the fact that the almost 100 year old ones on the main floor are still intact and functional, while the new ones gave up the ghost in less than two years ;) He is unimpressed.

Another thing I am so glad we didn't do was knock out the back wall to put in a crappy sliding vinyl garden door. Would it let more light in? Absolutely. But we would have lost the original, high, square, swing-in windows that are original to the house. They let in a nice breeze and have SO much character. Again, glad we didn't have the money ;)

The feature I hate the most about my 1892 house are the #%*$&@ vinyl windows some PO installed. Ugly, cheap junk that is already failing after only 5 years. I mentioned to someone that I envy my neighbor who has original windows, and they said something about "oh, but her fuel bills must be much higher" I seriously doubt it.

I get so upset when I see people install this junk. Ruins the look of the house, and it is just not possible to fabricate anything new to match the quality of the originals when the vinyl junk fails.

Paint my woodwork. It was very beat, and too light in places, greenish in others (it's poplar). But it's really grown on me. I'm very grateful to the many tradespeople who came in the house and gushed over it when they were ostensibly there to give me estimates about completely unrelated things. It made me overlook the generally beat-up look of many parts of it to the overall effect, which is still quite good. The way I see it now, one paint job would destroy 120 years of patina.

We had an open house party the evening of the day we closed. Emailed everyone we knew, ordered a ton of pizza, and brought coolers of sodas and beer. It was the best thing we ever did, because many people told us what they loved, or what they'd do. It would have been months or years after moving in before we were ready again to have a "show it off" party.