We are renovating and DH is driving me nuts as he thinks I don't do enough but everything I (or any of my family) do gets criticised as not being good enough.
His father worked away a lot so paid for professional tradespeople on his family home whereas my family have always done everything themselves and I acknowledge it takes longer and may not be a perfect finish but it is a lot cheaper.
I am really reluctant to do more painting/sanding as it gets criticised and his expectation is of professional quality and I don't have the experience or tools to achieve that. He goes on and on about how he'll have to redo the whole exterior wall my brother painted due to a couple of drips.
He has now announced we are just going to leave everything for 5 years unless I can come up with a garden design, costings and timframe and firm commitment as to what exactly I'll do.
And he's decided to sell our car (which I use to get to work) as he wants to buy a station wagon so he can tow a trailer. Our current car is a small sedan which is great for me as I'm not very confident parking (or driving which isn't helped by his criticism when I drive him occasionally). We probably borrow a car and trailer once every two months from a family member to dump building materials/garden waste during renov. so I feel I'm being penalised as he knows I'd be nervous in a large vehicle (his ideal is a double cab ute but they are waaay out of our price range).
I am so frustrated (and I get he wants me to do more but we can't offload our kids every weekend and they still require too much supervision to be able to do most tasks with them present). Also I'm happy to do stuff in the evening but he either starts drinking and is grumpy or cooks for hours and presents a meal at 9pm when I just want to go to bed. And of course when I go to bed I get criticised for that too and told its passive aggressive but as I'm the one who gets up when the kids do and sorts their breakfast etc. and don't get to sleep in until 8am then I don't generally want to stay up until 11pm watching crap tv.
It just feels like everything is a drag now and I dread coming home from work to find out what is wrong now. He can still be great fun when we go out but time at home is difficult and I get its weighing on him that things need to be finished but it takes time.
Sorry guess this is more of a rant.