I’m going to start off by clarifying that I love my husband dearly but there are somethings that just drive me crackers.  One of those things is how little interest he has in carrying out improvements to our house.    When it comes to decorating, DIY or more ambitious home improvements it’s down to me to arrange and/or convince my OH to part with his cash.  The latter is incredibly difficult I can tell you.

My husband will happily spend money on technology and new gadgets.  That is his thing.  If our iPad gets damaged he’ll be the first to visit the store to replace it in the blink of an eye.  His current project is to build his own PC.  He likes gaming and his Mac isn’t up to the job apparently (yep, you read strong sarcastic tones there). He’s bought an array of computer components, which I guess includes hard drives, graphics cards and alike and every night he’s tinkering away getting the settings correct so that he has a fully functioning PC at the end of it.

inside a PC

I totally get his need to do this stuff.  Technology is his passion.  As well as working in software development he likes to explore his own interests and projects in the field.  What I don’t get is how quick he is to spend money on it when we have other priorities.

The home improvements we need really hit me at this time of year because we are spending more time in the home and during autumn/winter it gets very dark in our house.  Our house faces South West which is great for the living room but doesn’t make the most of the available daylight for the dining room, kitchen and garden.

If I could convince my husband that improving our home was a good investment for our house, which it is by the way, I would totally redesign our kitchen and dining room.  We currently have a galley kitchen and open plan lounge and dining room.  I’ve come to the conclusion that open plan doesn’t work for families so well.  I’d like to make our lounge a separate room and make the dining room and kitchen open plan instead.

baking with kids

This design would work so much better for us.  If someone wants to chill out and watch TV they can without disturbing someone who’s busing working on something in the dining room or baking in the kitchen.  The galley kitchen we have at the moment drives my potty as there’s not enough space to do baking with the kids and there’s nowhere to sit and chat over coffee.

My vision would include extending the rear of the property to where our kitchen ends.  If it was feasible, I’d remove the flat roof that is on the current kitchen extension and add a slopping roof across the entire rear of the property.  I’d like to fit 3 or 4 windows from the brand Roof Windows to increase the amount of daylight coming in, especially for the winter months.  This would definitely make the room feel bright and spacious as well.

It would be my dream to create a large kitchen area on one side of the room and divide the space with a breakfast bar.  The remainder of the room would become a spacious dining area with patio door access onto our garden.  There would have to be space for a desk and computer somewhere, otherwise my husband literally wouldn’t have a bar of it.

white kitchen design

I’d like to hope that the extension gave us enough space to add a downstairs toilet under our stairs with perhaps a utility room next door.  Having a place to hide away our extensive laundry piles would make me so happy, but it’s not something my husband appreciates until he can’t find a white shirt for work.

When I broach the conversation of home improvements with my husband, his response is usually that we should move house.  When I ask him if we are going to move house he say no, so we are back to square one.  He can be quite shortsighted when it comes to the benefit of investing money in our home, but we have made some headway this year.  He did agree to have our loft insulated and boarded, which has given us a fantastic storage space and will help us to save energy going forward. I’m hoping it’s something I can build on now he’s seen the improvement it has made to our home.

Does your husband think it’s important to make improvements to your home or does he take some convincing?  Please do leave me a comment below as I’d love to know I’m not the only wife out there having these home improvement issues.

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This is a collaborative post. 

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20 COMMENTS

  1. My husband is a complete pain in the bum when it comes to house improvements. He always has grand schemes of what he will do, but it never comes to fruition.

  2. You need to hide pieces of the computer he is building and his gadgets and write a list of things that need doing, when he completes a task he can have a piece back, sometime we have to treat them like the kids, I often feel like I am a mother to my partner and he’s 14 years my senior ? xXx

  3. My husband needs lots of encouragement to tackle DIY etc. I find the best way to get something started is to start doing it myself – he will then usually take over.

  4. My hubbys in the building trade so makes renovations and builds extensions for his customer but hard getting him to work on our home.

  5. I need a new bathroom and I need to freshen the kitchen and possibly get a new carpet for the lounge, so currently saving to be able to do that x

  6. Home wants are never done, right? It’s good to rant, get it all out there. Everything will happen, it just seems to take forever sometimes!

  7. Totally agree!!!
    My next project is the kitchen
    Total refurb (discussions and screaming !!) Why do I need this and that when you can get one hundreds cheaper!!)

    Negotiations are ongoing

  8. I feel your pain I need a curtain rail to be put up I have waited forever. I’d do it myself if I could as it would be so much faster. Mine does make improvements but it takes a while.

  9. The Husband will spend hours watching Grand Designs but getting anything done takes ages. If he does organise something he usually ‘manages’ to be away at work so I have to supervise it.

  10. I love home improvement but it sure does cost doesn’t it!! I’m like you ideally I’d want to do over the kitchen! A kitchen diner sounds fab and you’re right about wanting to have a closed off lounge it makes so much more sense!

  11. I find generally home improvements are more important to women, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, i’m sure you’ll get it how you want eventually, and your home looks lovely by the way!

  12. Oh dear had to call out the plumber today
    All I’ve had since is why didn’t you ask me: I did last week!…

  13. My husband is useless at DIY! He hates it and I hate his attempts at trying to put things right. Sooo….. always costs me a fortune in the end!

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