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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To just want some bloody furniture?

169 replies

CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 17:45

DP and I moved into a new flat in April. We'd been renting a one bed furnished flat in the posh bit and bought an unfurnished four bed place in the shit up and coming area. I'm not on the deeds or the mortgage because DP is an accountant and, according to the bank, a proper person. I'm a lowly postgrad with no job security or taxable income, so all my savings were to go for the furniture budget and I pay him half the mortgage every month plus bills so it's about even.

As our first flat was getting sold by the landlord, we packed up our stuff and put it into storage and moved into my best mate's place for a few weeks. Then when we moved in, I was away at a conference then he was away, plus I work opposite hours to him.

During this time, DP argued that there was no point considering any kind of furniture, even a bed, because we didn't know the dimensions. Fair enough, but after nearly two months on an airbed, I put my foot down and we got one ordered for delivery the week we moved in. Bed is a bed no matter how big or small your rooms are! After some stropping, he went and let me buy some bedding. Under duress. Because he figured that a sleeping bag works just as well. A week later, he bought a tape measure.

In the first week we went bed shopping, we back with two Indian chests and a tree trunk for a coffee table. End of discussions. Still no chairs, no clothes storage, no kitchen table. Beanbags instead, and I'm not allowed a microwave because he thinks they're trying to kill him. Cutlery because I told him I'd go without him and pick it for him.

After another month, I shouted at him because our clothes are STILL in boxes and there'd be no movement or discussion on the wardrobe front because the bedroom 'design' means absolutely nothing in it but a bed and two rugs (from the old place). He build a garment rail out of copper piping in the boxes room that's held to the wall with climbing quickdraws because copper piping is fuckingbendy.

Turned a cupboard into a wardrobe with IKEA crates. Shouted and bribed and moaned and he went shopping for chairs. We came back with a Victorian painting easel and a box of medical textbooks from 1890. No chairs. The crates don't fit in the cupboard. He's decided we need more space and wants to build a new rail upstairs. That was about a month ago. It's now the place he hides boxes he wants me to think he's unpacked.

Forced him to IKEA to get the office set up so I can finally do some work. Got desks, which he complained were too small, then we finally got chairs. DP is a ridiculous person and we've got multi-coloured egg chairs. Bribed him to go to a furniture shop and he stormed out because he thinks it's not cool enough and it's the kind of furniture owned by people on Gogglebox he doesn't like it.

Ordered sofas a few weeks ago but they come in July. We've got a table made by some social enterprise that also takes weeks but I had to bribe him with 'urban botanist' plants so he'd buy legs for the fucking thing. Legs are in a box in our hallway. He let me buy shelves so I'd stop shouting at him. There's nothing on the shelves because he wants it to be minimalist.

Our friends think it's hilarious but they don't have to live here. I hate beanbags. We don't have any lights, or proper chairs, and our stuff is all in boxes and this week he spent £20 on a ham stand for the kitchen. I've got 5k sat in a bank account from working ten hour night shifts, it's not like he's got to fork out for any of it! But if I buy things he'll sulk like fuck!

AIBU? Should I just roll with it and accept it takes an age to furnish a place?

OP posts:
Inertia · 15/06/2016 19:23

He is totally lying to you. He just wants you to pay his mortgage without you having any claim on the property.

You are deluding yourself about the precariousness of your position -if you leave, he gets a lodger.

TheseLittleEarthquakes · 15/06/2016 19:24

Oh yes, there's no way he's naive about this. I suspect the furniture thing is so you can't clear him out of you split, or wouldn't want to because it's all fucking hideous.

But then I am a cynical old bag.

NeedACleverNN · 15/06/2016 19:24

Just be careful op.

Really really careful

TheseLittleEarthquakes · 15/06/2016 19:25

I'd filled our new house with new furniture by the end of the first month. I don't think that's unrealistic. We moved from a small house to a big house and needed loads.

RaptorInaPorkPieHat · 15/06/2016 19:27

Just make sure you keep receipts/proof of purchase for everything, so if it all goes tits up you get custody of the actual functional furniture (because you won't get anything else) Sad

BreakfastAtSquiffanys · 15/06/2016 19:29

Our first mortgage (way back in the dark ages) must have been based on DH's salary as he was a Master of the Universe banker getting paid by the bucketful whilst I was a lowly heathcare worker getting paid in small change and the lasting gratitude of people whose bums I'd wiped.
My name was on the deeds

whois · 15/06/2016 19:30

It is pretty normal to at least get the 'big ticket' items ASAP like a bed, sofa, wardrobes and dining table and chairs.

Spare bed, rugsm lamps, other stoorage and 'nice to have' items can wait.

TBH I think this kind of situation is what 0% credit cards are for. Fuck waiting 6 months for wardrobes.

ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 15/06/2016 19:36

Being an accountant I think your Dp might be a bit anal about money and not like spending it.
Is he worried that you'll burn through your savings furnishing the place and then he will have to pay most of the bills and mortgage because you don't have any reliable income?

OneEpisode · 15/06/2016 19:38

Any credit cards should be in the name of the accountant!

CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 19:40

EarlyNineties Yes. Yes, exactly that. I reckon this 'I want it to look cool' is an excuse for 'I don't want to buy a wardrobe because I just bought a flat'

OP posts:
ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 15/06/2016 19:42

Does he only find it hard to focus when you're talking about furniture? Grin

CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 19:44

Yea, funny that Hmm

OP posts:
ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 15/06/2016 19:46

Ok so under his alternative kooky facade lies a man obsessed with being terribly sensible with money and household budgets.
Minimalist = buying less expensive stuff. Smile

TooLazyToWriteMyOwnFuckinPiece · 15/06/2016 19:47

No one who is anal about spending money would spend any on a fucking ham stand

CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 19:48

Except that it's not him buying it and he can get it for free from Freecycle if he stopped being stubborn Grin

OP posts:
CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 19:49

To be fair to him about the ham stand: he'd bought a cured ham first because it was on sale and he deemed it an exceptional bargain.

OP posts:
BreakfastAtSquiffanys · 15/06/2016 19:50

Can you sit on the Ham Stand?

TheseLittleEarthquakes · 15/06/2016 19:51

My mother has a ham stand. It came with a joint of Serrano ham she ordered off the internet. It lives in the garage.

ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 15/06/2016 19:52

Someone said once that if you want your partner to agree with you, then always ask him when you're naked.

CockleCockleShell · 15/06/2016 19:52

Breakfast not comfortably, I'd imagine Grin

OP posts:
StatisticallyChallenged · 15/06/2016 19:54

With the deeds, I'm in Scotland but when we bought 2 years ago we couldn't have DH on the deeds but not the mortgage. As he's self employed and hadn't been for that long at the time he didn't have income which they'd take in to account for the mortgage which meant that if I included him on it he became essentially another dependent and it massive reduced the amount I could borrow (by about £54k I seem to remember)

There's been a lot of changes in mortgages rules over the last couple of years.

However he needs to grow the fuck up and buy some bloody furniture and stop trying to live a pinterest dream!

NarcyCow · 15/06/2016 19:55

In fairness, I don't think it would be that easy to replace the OP with a lodger. What's the going rate for a room with just a ham stand and an antique easel in it?

Palomb · 15/06/2016 19:57

So you don't have a bed of a sofa but the ham has a stand?

Love that!

But yes, fuck the rest of the shit.

ILostItInTheEarlyNineties · 15/06/2016 19:59

Haven't ham stands got metal spikes for the ham? It would be foolhardy to sit on it.

Mycraneisfixed · 15/06/2016 20:03

You have very odd RL friends! Maybe you haven't told them all the facts that you've posted here. You are being taken for a fool by a controlling man. It won't improve. Move out and regain your independence.

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