In 2020, my husband acquired a garden shed at Costco. To install the shed, he needed to get rid of the dog kennel we inherited with the house, remove the junk stored in said kennel, build a small retaining wall to keep the dirt from falling onto the space, and make a pad for the shed. Oh, and assemble the thing. So the kennel is gone (thanks to our contractors who almost had a fight over who gets to take it for free), the shed is out of the box, but there is zero movement on the other parts. It’s been 3 years… my husband is not a slacker nor does he have health issues to deal with the wall. He just keeps coming up with other more urgent projects! Like moving 2 cubic yards of crushed rock for a new backyard project. I’m keeping my mouth shut, but every time I run into the pile of shed parts in our guest bedroom I sigh…
Anyone else would like to share, talk, rant, etc. about their or their significant others’ half-assed projects?
At our previous house he bought a new hot water heater …. I don’t know why he bought it cause the other one was still working…and the one he bought never got installed …and years later we moved and left it for the new owners!
H has promised to repair our wooden window screens—several decades ago. Fortunately in the interim, while waiting I got us ductless A/C, so it no longer matters, since we keep A/C on 24/7 except while we travel. Haha! He only consented to the A/C when D said she couldn’t spend much time with us without A/C because her body can’t tolerate the heat and humidity. We got the A/C Nov 2022. H is the one who insists it always remain on.
In the summer & year round heat, our house really benefitted when ALL windows could be opened to let the cross ventilation through. When you have broken windows & screens, you can’t open windows without inviting bugs.
I have 50 finished quilt tops – they need to have batting cut, backing sewn, all three layers stitched together, then add binding.
S2’s old bedroom was supposed to be painted his sophomore year of HS (2008), once he cleaned the room. That happened in 2018. Still need to paint it; he’s now 32. Hope to finish it before he an his wife get here in September.
Have five baby quilts to make/finish; good thing I make them throw-sized, as most are now toddlers.
Bought some furniture intending to refinish it; who knows when that will happen.
On year 13 of mulling how to repair and remodel our main bathroom.
Decided last May to repaint the wall where we installed the new bay window. Not done yet.
H has two boxes of recycling that have been sitting in the living room since 2010. Needs to take it into the office for secure shredding, or I would have dragged it out of here eons ago.
I am definitely the queen of half-baked projects in my house.
The thing that got me to finish the comforters I started for the kids was I realized they were all very juvenile prints, suitable for very very young kids. The kids loved them and D shared her “comfortable” aka patchwork quilt at show and tell in preschool!
My neighbor lost his metal shed a couple of years ago when a tree came down on it in a big storm. The insurance would only cover the shed kit, not the installation. So the kit has been in his garage for two years. One morning I awoke to metal clanging and voices in my neighbor’s back yard. I saw my neighbor and another guy unboxing the shed kit. The other guy was my husband. He’s retired and likes to build things. It took them about three days. The neighbor then surprised my husband with a gift card to the local hardware store. Sometimes you just need another person.
I’m entirely capable of cleaning out closets or organizing my sewing room but it’s much more fun, and actually happens, if I hire my daughter’s bff who loves to organize and doesn’t quit until the job is done. And she’s funny and cheerful throughout.
We built our house in 1996. DH was the GC. We had a newborn and a toddler at the time. It was quite challenging.
To save time and money, we put in drywall next to the stairs in our living room with a vaulted ceiling. It was supposed to be temporary until DH could replace it with contemporary balustrades and railing. Well, that was 28 years ago and the drywall is still in place! DH is actually talking about the project now, at least.
DH “finished” our walkout lower level just enough so that DD could host a swim team party. Left to do…window trim, ceiling trim/paint in stairwell, door to utility room, hanging pleated blinds (which were bought when the project started). Project started in 2005. Not holding my breath.
My ex used to have that tendency as well. As an example, he put in a new door between the hallway and the kitchen, but just couldn’t/wouldn’t finish painting it. He would usually do a project up to 80% and just not finish it.
I used have a contractor who would come by on his way home (when I need him) to finish up those little projects. It wasn’t worth my while to nag or get in a fight with the ex about.
Oh, and I forgot about our large house addition. We finished it in 2008. DH needed to put a few finishing touches on it to get the occupancy permit. We finally got the permit in 2014!! Yikes. My sister-in-law worked in the insurance agency and pointed out that we probably wouldn’t be covered without the permit.
My husband is a mechanical engineer. This is important because he can do almost anything. The problem is that you will never know when that will be. It’s definitely not in my schedule.
And more importantly, you have to finish one project before you start another.
He also does not put tools or projects he buys away. He has helped that his mother bought him a used toolbox. Now stuff kinda gets put away. I put stuff in the basement now. Out of sight, out of my mind. Mind you, we can afford a toolbox. But a used one is so much better.
But years to change the dryer vent that was broken.
A friend of mine is married to a contractor. As I always say, the cobblers children have no shoes
My husband bought brown paint for the back porch about 15 years ago, hasn’t been opened, porch has deteriorated, had the whole house professionally painted but he didn’t do the porch because we went a deck. That was 3 years ago. We bought his childhood home, he’s exactly like his dad. There were years when this house had no back porch, just a doorway to nowhere. Driveway is out back so it’s pretty handy to have a porch.
My daughters learned my lessons well. They do not not DIY. If anything needs to get done, they hire a contractor. If they couldn’t couldn’t afford it they wait.
My spouse should have studied engineering, but is a chemist that instead does a dizzying amount of mostly engineering-ish projects at work and at home. There are countless projects in varying states of progress, and the organization is a real struggle.
These projects go deeeep, like professional-level skills. We are both very handy and resourceful, so there’s little we cannot fix. The points of conflict are that I don’t like having a lot of stuff laying around, I get stressed about spending money, and the stuff that really needs to get done can be neglected.
My engineer at heart has bad anxiety and likely OCD, which is mostly controlled with meds and heavy exercise. But the projects are the main outlet for the remaining mental noise, and we have both come to see them in that role, after many years of trying to manage. My MIL and her dad are clearly the genetic source for this, so we do a lot of reflection through that lens, which helps. We can also laugh about it a lot, which is perhaps the most helpful thing.
My spouse is ridiculously self-aware and always willing to change, but it’s almost like an addiction. Recently my spouse acquired an item that had been a fixation for decades: a set of speakers I had when we were 19 years old. We don’t need them, they’re nothing special, I don’t care one bit about them, and they were super hard to find. They arrived in the mail and I said “Oh I bet you’re happy to finally have these, that must be exciting”, and my spouse replied, “no I’m not happy, I’m just relieved that I can stop thinking about them now”. There are a hundred other things like this. And my spouse has been to a LOT of therapy over the years.
We strategize a lot: we’ve agreed to downsize by half once the youngest graduates since no amount of space will ever be “enough”; spouse will be very careful with retirement plans since that will likely send things into overdrive; there’s continual discussion of what health care professionals can/cannot help with. But it’s all relative: if you knew my MIL and her dad, you’d see that this is far better controlled and reasonable than what they (and their spouses) endured. It’s a very interesting situation, but my spouse is the absolute best so I see it as something I will happily work on together!
This thread is giving me anxiety ; ). At my house, if a project is started it absolutely has to be finished in a reasonable length of time or I will go ballistic. H knows this. As such we are in the hire it out camp for any large project.
Our yard has gotten away from us. It is huge and way too much property for the two of us to maintain. We’ve had projects completed by professional landscapers, but it’s an endless battle to keep creeping vines like wisteria and Virginia creeper at bay. H is really good at cutting things down. But he is not so good as picking the cuttings up and disposing of them. I’ll go somewhere and will return to find he will have cut huge amounts of branches and the like and they are just laying where they fell. And they will stay there until I clean them up. H is famous for announcing that he’s going to do something “today” - finish a project, dispose of yard cuttings, take a trip to the dump or Goodwill…well, today might as well be tomorrow in perpetuity.
Like moving 2 cubic yards of crushed rock for a new backyard project. I’m keeping my mouth shut, but every time I run into the pile of shed parts in our guest bedroom I sigh… 
