DIY when you could pay someone instead?

[RoyKentsTieDyeTop]

DH and I fundamentally disagree on this. We’re both off work this week to get shit done round the house. Shit has been down, mostly, hurrah.

But some of it omg. We had a new sofa delivered. We could have paid £30 to have the old one taken away. We could have paid £30 to have the council collect it from outside. But no. DH has spent most of today with a hacksaw and hammer making it small enough to fit in the back of the car to take to the tip on Monday. For the sake of £30.

I know it’s not worth arguing. We’ve been married for a very long time. And fair to him, he hasn’t demanded I help (because I’d just pay someone given the choice).

But I don’t get it. He’ll happily spend £30 on books or gifts or food or fun. But this is the hill he will die on. I tend to think my time is more valuable, maybe?

Who is being unreasonable?

For context I will happily paint walls or do gardening (up to a point) but I would always pay for a carpet fitter or wallpaperer, this is fine. It’s heavy lifting and rubbish clearance we seem to disagree on most. I dream of a skip for the garage for eg; DH would rather chip into it with random infrequent trips to the dump.

Neither's right, neither's wrong at face value.

My df would only get someone in for something he couldn't do. He could do pretty much all DIY though. We got people in for gas (obviously) and I think we had someone to do the chimney when it got a crack in it because he wasn't confident he could do it. He'd never have paid £30 to get someone to take it away. But if eg. a shelf needed putting up he'd have started with a log to make the beautifully carved shelf... However he always had a list of jobs and some things that weren't urgent took a very long time to get done. The kitchen that he started redesigning when they first moved into the house was finally done 20 years later in retirement.

My fil is the opposite. I once jokingly called the phone book his "DIY book". But he isn't practical. If he put up a shelf, it would be 2 brackets from B&Q screwed into the wall and a piece of chipboard cut to size from the shop... and then the shelf would fall down within a couple of hours of anything being put on it. So he'd get someone in to do it, and it would get done fairly quickly.

Dh is a mixture. he tries to do what he can. But we have to get more people in to do things than we did growing up because his DIY skills are at the basic level. Better than his dad, but nothing like the skill of mine.

The things that irritates me is when he insists he can do something and I've had a reasonable quote in and then takes months to get on and do it (often with the stuff all over the lounge) or when I get a quote, which I know is good or comparable with others and he wants three quotes so he can consider them when it's actually something urgent.
The latter has gone a bit since lockdown though. Before lockdown I worked part time and he was in the office. Now he wfh and I'm in the office. It was a bit of a shock to him the first time I told him the gas man was coming to do a service and he found I didn't have plans to go to work, come home to let the gas man in, wait around while he did the service and go back in later, probably missing half a day of work. He was most horrified to find I expected him to spend 5 minutes answering the door and showing the gas man where the boiler was and then probably 5 minutes at the end paying.
Once I'd finished laughing at the idea I should come home, he accepted it though. And it's had the lovely side effect that he's no longer so keen on lots of quotes now he sees what a hassle they can be (and has to do the showing the workmen mostly).

In dh's case I think he'd have taken the sofa to the tip himself if it hadn't needed sawing up. I suspect the sawing up would have meant he was happy to pay, however he does only have a hacksaw!