Holy fecking hell, Dtwat is 'being useful' and I am on the verge of killing him. Seriously 😑😑😑

[BastardBloodAndSand]

The bloody sighing, huffing and moaning is ridiculous.

He's painting the dining room, first of all he gathered all coats, shoes etc (( the.general shite that was dumped in there )) and threw them in the living room. He didn't throw stuff in bin bags or wait for me to come home and ask for help relocating. Nope, I came home to stuff EVERYWHERE and a step ladder jauntily perched on top.

And don't even get me started on the martyrism, all offers of help have of course been refused so he can continue making as much noise as possible as he struts round BEING useful.

And now, I've just nearly killed myself walking into to put his tea out (( he was too busy being noisily useful to deign himself to venturing into the room next door )) when I skidded in a huge patch of water. What did you expect ? He says, I'm washing down the skirting boards. Yep, those things of the fucking WALL. Not the middle of the.damn floor.

It's a 12.foot square room ffs, if he hadn't spent the past 3 days strutting round doing some sort of I'm being useful mating ritual it would have been done on day one.

I'll end up drowning the fool in a tub of dulux white before the weeks out I swear I will. 😑😑😑

I also have a passive aggressive cleaner here. All tasks have to be as loud as possible, complete with mutterings and huffing and puffing. I gives me the rage.

This is why I do all the decorating. I'm fast, neat and efficient and I actually enjoy it. Dh is messy, untidy, can't cut in and just bloody sloppy.
Last time he "helped" he got deep raspberry emulsion on the newly painted white ceiling, on the skirting, the new wooden flooring and a great sweep of it across a cream fabric footstool.

He's very good at doing things (just repaired the flush mechanism on our loo and mended the handle on the downstairs loo after it got broken during a party) but never puts anything away! The garage is a midden and very near being a death trap. He'll come home one day to a skip and me and my Dad sorting everything. We have to lock the door when Dad visits so he can't get in there!

Slightly different situation but I have a (unknowingly) passive aggressive worker here too. Except that he has CFS and a fairly severe dust allergy. So he appears keen but tasks take a million times longer than anticipated and he always needs three days to recoup after putting some shelves up.
The guilt I collect whilst he's sneezing (which is never just a sneeze but a dramatic build up, loud execution and gasping for air panting finish) and coming up in rashes/obvious double dosing on antihistamines then crashing exhaustedly weak and feeble after an hour of painting is unbareable! I usually just get on with it myself, but now I'm 34 weeks pregnant with SPD and high risk I really need his help.

I'm not sure if he really finds it soooooo difficult or if he's just being 'useful' but feeling guilty gives me THE RAGE so decorating the nursery is not exactly the fluffy, cuddly experience you'd expect.

DH Is pretty good at DIY and gets it done in a reasonable timeframe. However, he is incapable of doing a DIY task without losing his tools. He will put a hammer down somewhere and promptly not be able to find it again.
Then the swearing starts.

It irritates me so much I have to go out.

DH began our dinning room last July, the ceiling still hasnt been painted nor the woodwork. He did get the previous wallpaper off. I employed a man to put the new paper up as I probably would be signing for divorce what took the man a day to wallpaper would have taken DH days. He got over his sulking at me getting someone in to do work as I allowed him to paint two walls which took two weeks and he still has to do the ceiling. I just dont get the amount of faffing he must do when it comes to decorating. he says its to get everything perfect.
I would take over but then that would cause mega strops that I just cant be arsed with like when i finished painting the stairs and landing.

You had me at Dtwat!

curvy yes to the fecking masking tape!! I'd be like you and just go slow and careful but DH spends hours taping everything and still gets paint on the carpet, door handles etc
Just in case anyone wants an update on my hall, there is now paint on some of the woodwork. Not all, and certainly no wall paint has yet been attempted, but still. Progress

NY dh is actually quite good at diy, if you can get him to start - and make sure he finishes!
He fitted our kitchen. It looks great.
First of all he left it to me to find a carpenter to do the worktops. I know nothing about carpentry.
'Just pick a likely looking one from the phone book.' Well I couldn't tell a likely carpenter from my elbow so I called a friends dad who did a good job, but wasn't cheap.
Then the paint…
Right. I decorated ds1's room and out room and I painted the downstairs loo. All fine.
Dh decides to paint one small square of wall and throws a hissy fit as the paint must be bad.
He made the wall look like it had leprosy, all runs and peels and weird lumps.
This is the paint I used for my sons room. I had no problems with it. I painted the rest of the walls in the kitchen and had no problems at all. All nice and smooth, no weird textured effects.
Dh still believes the paint was bad.
No dear, your painting technique is what's bad.
I have rebelled from being the diy handmaid though. I could never understand why he wanted me stood there holding a screwdriver for him.
'Oh, but I get on so much better with someone to talk to.'
'But don't talk to me, except to get me to pass you things.'
'Well I'm concentrating.'
Actually he only wanted me to stand next to him ad he'd have to spend less time wondering where he put his hammer and so he could feel like he wasn't the only one suffering.

Are we all with the same bloke? DP is just the same, won't clear away before starting anything, makes a godawful mess, won't clear up afterwards and never finishes a job.

It doesn't make any difference whether it's making toast and marmalade or fitting a new kitchen, it's sheer bloody chaos.

He also never puts tools or equipment away anywhere sensible, so we have to buy stuff we've already got because we can't fucking find it. I had to buy a new screwdriver and pliers the other day, because MY set, that live in the kitchen "messy drawer", had gone awol.

I found them 3 days later, abandoned in the motorhome. Luckily DP wasn't home at the time, or he'd be in the morgue now and I'd be in custody.

I pay a handyman to do any diy because Dtwat is absolutely useless at all of it. Lacks any common sense when it comes to diy of any sort, the small amount of things he did do were half hearted attempts. Caused many arguments. It's one of many reasons he's now an ex!

shinynewusername - my DP is exactly the same, why I manage to do all the cooking and washing etc without help, but any small DIY task has to involve me standing there passing him things...

Although he is excellent at DIY type stuff, had made me a lovely duck house for the pets, but everything has to be perfect. I do occasionally want to strangle him half way through!

Have you been asked to do an "emergency" B&Q run for a thingameegingamee in size twelvety and a half because the 100 of them he has in size twelvety just won't work for a master craftsman like him?

No?

Well it's coming so brace yourself :)

XH never did any DIY, happily leaving it to me while he did 'important' things like sitting on his arse all evening/weekend.

However his speciality was to come and interfere when I was close to finishing a job- he would wait until the main bulk had been done and then try to wrestle the screwdriver/saw/drill from me, while saying "Here, let me do that! If you'd just asked I would have done this job!" I did ask, you lazy fucker, a million times

No way was he going to bagsy credit from his adoring severely deluded mother for doing MY DIY.

I had a DH like these ones, took him 4 years to recover from the 3 month kitchen fit which didn't include laying floors, tiling or painting walls.

I discovered I had a scout who wanted to do her DIY badge as no one had got it in her troop. She has form for wanting to do badges no one else has. Over a bank holiday weekend we had a painted and tiled kitchen, two rooms wallpapered, bathroom pipes boxed in, half a dozen flatpack bookshelves built and a landing carpeted.

She got her badge, I got jobs finished and DH now dreads any DIY as if he starts and doesn't finish DD is on his back. AND he puts away any tools he's used because if he doesn't DD claims them as hers and she currently has a fabulous tool kit.

And this I why I do ALL the decorating and DIY jobbies in the house as

A) I'll be waiting for approximately five years if DH is doing it
B) he's crap at it.
C) last time we put together some flat pack furniture I'd put together the frame and five-of-six drawers while he was still staring at the screws like a hypnotised dummy.
D) I could have parked a bus in the gaps between the two floor tiles I let him lay, AND I CAN'T EVEN BLOODY DRIVE.
E) the huffs and puffs alternated with "aren't I GREATs" are almost as annoying as the splatted on mess he describes as painting.

Lock him in a cupboard* and do it yourself.

• I am not a real doctor.

This thread reminds me of an old joke:

Q: How many men does it take to tile a bathroom?

A: One is usually enough, but you have to slice him very thin.

Oh god this is my dh, we are currently 3 fucking weeks into repainting the bathroom and have all been dragged to Homebase for supplies with dteens.
The walls are sanded and I am under orders not to get involved unless asked as I have dodgy back, 2 bloody hours at Homebase selecting the right width of masking tape and decorators caulk, followed by new roller heads and brushes. And then finally I was encouraged with dteens to choose the paint and yep it was totally inappropriate so he then spent 10 mins telling us why before picking the same fucking colour in a different Finnish
Home now and he's watching the motor race before he starts !

DH planned to paint the kitchen over Easter...dust sheets down for days, adamant that he could do it, he didn't need help, on good Friday he was going to start on Saturday, then Saturday became Sunday, on Sunday "hmm I'm not sure this is a one day job actually" He went back to work on Easter Monday and me and teenage DS1 had the room painted by the time he got back in the evening! Then he huffed because we'd done his job

He's lost his screwdrivers! Of course I must have moved them as he always never puts them away in his tool box so now he's in a foul mood and will wander round aimlessly creating a mess trying to find them !

I am single thank God and my female lodger does DIY professionally so anything I need she does it for me very quietly, efficiently and without fuss. And cleans up after.

I've now found the bloody screwdrivers cupboard under the sink but have decided since he's being a dtwat it's more fun not to tell him, so I've put them in a vase on the bathroom windowsill. I've got a £5 bet with dd1 that he won't see them