Saturday, December 14

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Ummm, my animals. That the weather was nice.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I woke up tired, and the day began with me already feeling angry at the world.

My husband wanted to go to the dump today, so we did that.

I did chores, and as I mentioned, I went back to bed because I was just tired of even trying.

He wanted to bake buns, after all my anger and frustration at the house progress coming to a grinding halt again, and I was just like....

So I made it clear that pretty much the ONLY acceptable response was "let's work on the house today".

He got huffy and went to the addition and started working on the doorway that will be between the current main bedroom that we are in, and the bedroom of the future.

The doorway is necessary, because when we are in the other bedroom, our current bed room will become the master bathroom.

Since he is putting in fir flooring in the future bedroom, he has to have the door way mostly cut so that the wood will lie into the opening correctly.

So from the sounds of things, that's mostly what he accomplished, is readying the door way by cutting away the footers at the bottom.

After a very short period of time in that room, maybe an hour, he was like "well, all done for the day!".

I was like "the hell you are".

He thought he would just wrap things up and eat supper after all the drama and fighting, and think that ONE HOUR OF WORK would be enough.

No.

I made him something to eat, and said "just keep going, thanks".

Then I decided to paint the ceiling in the mud room ONE MORE TIME because it wasn't even, and I needed to do it to move forward in that room.

So THAT took a couple of hours, and at least I had his help in doing the piece above the stairs into the basement.

So, we did get something done.

At probably too great a cost for me emotionally.

Comments

[spatzenpost]

That must be so very challenging, Gottawonder. Does your husband not see the work to be done or is he just ignoring it for some reason?

[gottawonder]

Here's the thing. I know there are lots of other things that he DOES do on a day to day basis.

He works, he often does dishes, he and I take turns making supper, and there are always things like smaller jobs that he seems to willingly tackle. You know how it is, there are always things that need doing.

The BIG things like "finishing the floor in the bedroom" are time-consuming, and it's very easy to just shrug and say "well, we don't have time to start that today".

Thing is, without a plan, that can turn into months, and then years. That's exactly what has happened.

I wasn't upset about not getting to the work inside the house over the summer because he was legit working on "outdoor" things, like finishing the siding.

Okay, but when do we work on the bedroom again? WHEN?

I am FINE by the way, with him breaking something big like the bedroom floor into smaller bits, where he just works on it for an hour after work once or twice a week. I'm fine with that.

After we worked on it today, only after me having a mental breakdown, I asked him what was so hard about working in that room, since he was able to do so today and nothing bad happened?

He said he just didn't feel very confident about the project, and was worried about it not going well.

I asked him "well, what did you think, that somehow you'd just feel more confident later, by not addressing it at all"?

He didn't have a real response. He just...didn't want to mess it up, so he stopped working on it.

The issue of course, is that how did he think we would get the house finished if he just...avoided anything difficult?

Why not try to gain confidence by researching how to lay flooring some more, or look for someone with more experience to give him some advice? SOMETHING?

In case you're wondering, no we can't just hire someone. It would cost a LOT, and we can hardly ever find a contractor willing to do something that is a "reno" in an old house (in the boonies, too), because they all want to do contract work with developers on new houses.

We KNOW people who probably could have helped him with this, if he'd just asked them.

Overall, I don't know what's going on with him. He always used to say how much he loved working on the house, but I've usually felt like I had to fight to get him to finish things. He likes THE IDEA of working on the house, and he likes PUTTERING away in his garage and buying all the material for a project, but it can take him years to finish a room all the way to being done. He generally stops working on a room once you can "live in it", not to where it is finished aesthetically.

This has been going on pretty much our entire relationship. We used to live in an old trailer that required a lot of work, and before that another "fixer upper".

I really do love my husband, and if you read my journal you'll see that I appreciate him in many ways and that we do have a lot of good days and I care about him deeply.

The house is driving me insane. As "the house", whichever one we were living in, has always driven me insane, because we are always in a fixer upper. Because he likes fixing up houses.

[cf2princessawnw]

So sorry to hear of the heavy emotional drain and stress.💖💖💖💖 Take care to pour back into yourself at the very least. Hugs

[gottawonder]

Thank you.