Is your DP houseproud?

[felulageller]

I'm at loggerheads with DP over our very different attitudes to our new house. We waited a long time to buy. I had dreams for years of all the nice things I wanted to do once I had my own place and not rentals where we couldn't decorate/ put pictures on the walls etc. I even had a folder with pictures cut from magazines.

He was well aware of all of this as I'd been buying things for the anticipated home for years. I thought he was on the same page as me.

But now we're here I'm continually upset as he's not stepped up to doing the jobs that need done around the house now we're owners. I feel like he's just treating it like another rental and not taking care of it.

Eg I bought new carpets. Came home one day to see a stain in the living room. I asked why he hadn't tried to remove the stain. He just looked at me as if there was something wrong with me for being upset at the stain and expecting him to clean it.

Incidents like that x 10.

I don't expect a Pinterest showhone but I've spend thousands doing it up and it pains me to see it deteriorating so quickly.

I've actually been glad of lockdown in respect of that being an excuse not to have visitors as I'd be ashamed to have anyone visit here.

Are other DPs like this?

@Apeirogon

So GertietheGherkin you think it's ok for the OP to pay for new carpets from her own money, without a penny's contribution from her DP, and she shouldn't mind at all when he stains the new carpet and doesn't even attempt to clean it up?

Hmmmm, well usually if people live together, have brought a home it's usually with family/ pooled money. Otherwise it's be her DP walking on 'her" carpets, in "her" house brought with "her" money... So it's not really his home is it? Why should he bother about "her" carpets? They're nothing to do with him or his responsibility, he didn't buy them.

The poor buggers already been painted as having lived in a "council house" by way of reminding him he should be grateful even being in OP's house. It's no wonder he's doing nothing, he's probably too scared to breathe half the time. If he's paid towards the purchase of the house, he owns half of it, it makes no difference whether it's got fancy bits in it, the bricks and mortar are half his.

@felulageller

He's taller, stronger and has better hand eye co-ordination than me so I think it's fair he does stuff like hanging pictures, painting to the ceiling, jobs involving hammers/screwdrivers etc. I suppose I always knew he wasn't a DIYer but thought that having own own home would change him. I've paid for various workmen to do the big jobs (which he oversaw) but some of them have been botched jobs which he hasn't chased up/finished off/ got new workmen out to do.

If he won't do DIY I'll pay to get it done professionally but he's not even motivated to do that!

Once the basics are up to scratch I'd happily pay for a cleaner/roomba etc.

It's more my frustration at not being able to understand why he doesn't care about this stuff?

Ie surely most people would be annoyed at visible plaster? Loose wires?

@felulageller Ah so you thought that you could change him. It's the old saying the women hope they can change men and men hope women don't change.

Why should he have to take care of/sort out workmen for botched jobs for DIY that YOU wanted? Why can't you fix it yourself. If you weren't prepared to sort DIY and you already knew he's not into DIY, you shouldn't have deliberately bought a home that needed that set of DIY. Unless you both explicitly discussed DIY before you bought the house and he agreed to do it/sort it, you're building up unfair resentment towards your DH when it's not his fault.

*sort of DIY

@StuffLikeThat

God yeah, my husband is like this and it drives me mad. He doesn't work and the house is his "job" yet despite that, it's still a cluttered and untidy mess. He doesn't see the thick layers of dust on the skirting boards or the marks on the freshly painted walls. I've now given up. My perfect home exists only in my dreams. The same ones where I live on my own with the kids and have a happy, peaceful, tidy "Ideal Home" house.

@StuffLikeThat can you leave your dh and have that happy home?

We are house proud in different ways. DH has no idea re style, colour, how to arrange things. I do all of that. However, he is very, very pernickety about tidiness, a mark on a wall and the stained carpet would have been a crisis potentially involving NATO.

He does no decorating or DIY but happy to pay tradesmen.

@my0123 for goodness sake what is this obsession on this forum with cajoling women to leave their husbands and break up their families over every single thing?!

It's so sad there are people on this board who are so invested in breaking up other people's families. People need to bear in mind there is a real marriage and real children involved here.

It certainly won't be a happier home for her children; somehow I think they'd prefer their own loving dad with them full time and an intact family over a tidier house 🙄