to pay someone else to do our decorating?

[herecomesthebacon]

According to my father it is monumentally U for us to pay someone else to do all our painting and decorating as we could "easily do it ourselves".

I'm shit at painting and anything remotely "handy" and I fucking hate it to boot, DH is pretty handy but works 12 hour days and takes months and months to get round to doing anything. Just find it so much easier and less stressful this way.

We're repainting the whole flat at the moment and literally every time I see my father he talks about how much money we're wasting. Does my head in. AIBU?

If you can afford to pay someone and your talents lie elsewhere, why wouldn't you leave it to the professionals. But as a PP said find a good one - ask around for personal recommendations and them grill them about prep work when they come to quote.

I've already got a fab local decorator/handyman, used him consistently for the past few years and he's great.

Tell your FIL that this is economics 101 - the world got richer when we all specialised in what we were good at and paid / traded with others who were better at other things. It has made the world richer over the intervening centuries and unless your FIL plans on going back to the Middle Ages or before, he is being massively U.

It is better to earn money doing what you are trained for and good at and use it to pay a trained decorator

This. They also have the right tools etc. If you do it yourself you have to go out and buy (or borrow) stuff you may never need again. It's a false economy in my view.

As an example, I am plying my wisdom on MN to you, while a very competent man paints my living room. He will have done in 1 day what I tried doing (in a smaller room upstairs) over two weeks!!!!

YANBU OP and your father is clearly poking his nose in where it's not welcome. Me and DH are both capable of decorating but to do it properly is tedious and time consuming (including prep etc). It's absolutely worth every penny to us to have the time to ourselves as we have busy lives.

It really annoys me when people feel the need to comment on what others decide to spend their money on! OK perhaps mention something once if you feel you absolutely must (even if it's ill judged and rude). But then LEAVE IT ALONE. It sounds like your father is constantly getting at you about this which I imagine is very wearing

Oh no, get someone else in!!! Best thing me and dh did!!! We spent an entire weekend painting the spare room (guitar and book room) now our sons bedroom.
Paid a decorator to come do the hall, stairs and landing, livingroom, bathroom and kitchen. Took him 4 and a half days, was a brilliant decision!

The only things that should matter are..
can you afford to?
Is it a ridiculously small easy job? (Convincing dgm we’d paint her bathroom windowsill was a job in its own vs hiring a decorator to gloss one piece of wood)

We can’t afford to go for a decorator so we do it ourselves on evenings and weekends. But we’re also doing super basic stuff like stripping old crappy paper and painting walls a plain colour until our kids are older/not going to doodle on walls/don’t need baby gates.

Just don't tell him!