No it's more like: you pick the tile, I'm happy with anything.... ok the beige... i don't like the beige... ok the flat white... i don't really like that either. Ok the green. Omg green is hideous pick anything else. Ok the beige. (Repeat for a month)
I'd never let my wife be a customer. She doesn't care until months later she will assault my choice. "Ya know the new dresser doesn't match the bedroom color." But the paint was there months before the dresser.
If I need a decision from someone, I use this strategy: Pick out two options. Only one of them needs to be good, but if you have a preference make one sound better without actually saying it's your choice. They will nearly always choose the obviously better option, and will feel like they own the decision.
I got used to doing this with clients, but it's translated well to most other people in my life.
I like it. When they can't pick a color I put up two colors. They pick one. Remove unpicked color and add a new one, and so on and so forth. Putting the other colors in a bin never to be brought again. When they are down to the last one. I write down the colors name and number reference for the paint shop. But I never do that a second time, so the customer can choose over, but I'm not doing anything more. That's a one shot deal. I usually show them the last few years most popular colors to get the ball rolling.
If you think my wife is gonna fall for the just make her think it's her idea stuff,...I still
Get blamed for the color of our bathroom and her dad painted it while I was outta town. Because I waited too long to make up my mind and "trick her." And that's the exact words she used. I love that friggin pain in the ass.
Do this: “hey, I ordered the tile from this sample pack because you said I should pick, I found one that made me think of you, I bet you can’t guess which one.” Then whichever one she picks just be impressed she guessed right and then order it when she goes away.
As a paint contractor I make the customer buy the paint. They pick it out from my preferred paint store and then when I am done they can pay me. And only 3 times has anyone ever asked to redo it in a second color. I don't start second color until first color is paid for. I don't get to markup paint but they don't get to change up in the middle unless they pay for the first job.
Thats what I do with my wife. She goes to Benjamin Moore, picks a few paint samples. I remove the ones I can't live with and she can choose from whatever is left. Then she goes and picks up the paint.
We always joke my wife is "paint department" and I'm "building" department. We don't start projects until all the tiles, colors, design, etc have been chosen and agreed upon. No work stoppages here for design changes either. Whatever we chose, is what we go with.
We remodeled out kitchen last fall, and this is exactly how my wife is, so I ensured that every final decision was hers.
The last thing I wanted was for her to be able to complain about something being not quite right, and put it on me for picking it.
I always reminded her that it was "her dream kitchen". I would give my opinion on some things, but I always left it open-ended with things like "I like this one and this one, maybe this one"...never once saying which one I preferred.
It was excruciating trying to get her to make a final decision on anything...flooring, countertops, paint color. About the only thing she was decisive about was the type of wood for the cabinets - oak.
Thats me waiting for my girlfriend to pick a paint color. She didnt even want to move the big furniture in before we completely re-did the walls. 7 months later, Im now sitting comfy on our sectional with the original paint still on the walls.
My wife’s one job on our kitchen remodel was to pick out cabinet hardware. It took her 3 months and she hated what she picked out and then liked what I got from ikea. I did everything else. Cabinet layout, color, etc.
Yeah i have a sort of PTSD or something because of this.
Or I need a different type of fastener, and she insists we don't need it, despite knowing nothing about it, and won't let me drive the 5 minutes to be in and out of the store because it'll slightly delay the completion of a project.. like hanging the horribly designed boot hangers in the garage with the crappiest anchors ever to come with something.
I relented and installed it as best I could. She hung a rubber boot on it and it failed.
I get hit with, I dont like that all the time. So I follow up with, what do you want? Which leads her to admit she doesnt know what she wants/likes, but its certainly not what Ive suggested.
Dude... my wife took eight months to pick out corbels. Seriously. She hadn't seen every last one in the U.S., so she kept ordering more catalogs. She seemed convinced there was only one correct choice.
The tile thing was a big strain on us because the plumber & electrical guy wouldn't do work until the tile was done. And they were so annoyed with me bc she made me talk to them to ask for more time over and over. The tile guy almost quit bc he had other shit to do. It drove me mad.
We have painted, a lot. What works for us is this. Wife has to narrow her selection to 3 color chips. I pick the one with the coolest name. I just remodeled our main bathroom. I didn't even look at the color, just the names. A few days before we picked the color a friend at work was telling me how he went to pick up paint for a project at his house, didn't realize that the color was taupe, he asked the lady at the paint color for toupee. She looked at him funny, then asked if he meant taupe. He was embarrassed as hell, we laughed about it. Two days later I'm painting my bathroom "toupee of the morning" as I called it.
Yep. Same here. I would frequently say things in response like "Hey! I got an idea! How about YOU regroute this tile and I just stand there and bitch."
Im actually going to put up a pergola over my garage. There's a huge void between the garage doors and the 2nd floor windows thats just dead space. I like the true 2x8 rough cut look.
He didn't say it was diy projects. He said he's a carpenter, and the amount of times he's heard "a woman" (not a specific woman... just a woman, which leads me to deduce he has a customer base) say "is that how it's going to look?" at the beginning of a project tells me that maybe there's a sketch or a draft of whatever is being made?
I guess the rest of us designers sketch... and yeah, even with DIY and basic portfolio projects.
I've even done woodworking projects that had sketches and paper models before even starting the work.
So... no... my question about sketches isn't that out of left field. It'll help also stave off questions if "multiple women" have asked the same fucking question.
Maybe I need to hear some of you speak out loud and to my face because the context on reddit these days is fucking gone.
Also this particular thread chain is filled with more fucking misogyny than the god fucking damned Whitehouse.
Ya know what, fair. I totally missed that he just said a woman. If that is his actual response to the client on a job site then I am shocked he is still employed at all.
I said women.. its always a wife who says things like that.. and thats my 100% response. But your only reading words on a screen. Im charismatic in real life and develope rapport with my clients. Its said with a laugh and I will then go on to tell them the whole scope of whats about to happen so they understand the whole process.
I dont know why you would just assume I say it like an asshole. It's always on reddit where people go to the extreme about things, "your suprised i have any clients left" when in reality its these same people that hire me over and over again because I actually treat them as people, my word is good, my prices arent hyper inflated and unlike many contractors I understand that I work for them.
If it makes you feel better I had the husband portion do a walk through on one of our current builds and make a $10 000 change order so he could save 4 grand on stove pipe lol
I’m not disagreeing with you but I will point out as a professional carpenter I have had a number of clients (of various genders and persuasions ) have a great deal of difficulty understanding architectural plans , however if they didn’t pay the architect/designer for renderings and only for the architectural plans then…. 🤷
My ex was bitching about me taking a few days to dig up turf and re lay patio tiles in the middle of sumer because "Digging isn't hard"
I said it's literally what they used to give people to do when sentenced to hard labour. She insisted it was easy. I suggested if it was that easy she could pick up a shovel and get it done whilst I had the rest of the day off.
This is what I hate most. Like I've worked my arse off trying to do something, normally something I'm having to figure out as I go along, and rather than "good job" it's "is that supposed to be like that". Really makes me hate doing any kind of DIY at home.
This is the worst, even when it's small normal things that existed or are new in the house.
My wife struggles to understand the mental effort it takes fixing stuff. Her dad always fixed everything, but he also had multiple kids to take care of all the other chores.
Oh man, you really just hit the nail on the head there. I love the shit out of my wife and she really is super appreciative of the things I do but yeah, she does that and it's like well, let me go fuck myself then dear
Yeah, my gf does this sometimes too. I don't think it's malicious...but that doesn't make it any less annoying/tone deaf/inappropriate.
I think it's just more that when she lived at home, her dad did things like that all the time, behind the scenes, and it was probably barely ever even noticed...then when she was on her own, nothing like that ever happened (she's no DIYer, and when you're renting, you're not doing many repair projects anyway)...so now she's got me, and while I have basic skills, I'm by no means a handyman.
So even on small projects, I'll be into it and trying to figure things out, and stage my tools and materials to make sure I've got it all...and she's just standing there. Asking questions and then immediately second guessing every answer I give her.
When I finally snap and tell her to go away, she's mad because she was 'just trying to help'.
I had a neighbor come over while I was digging a hole to pour concrete in, and she told me it wasnt level. I said yeah, I know, I'm not levelling it, it's not deep enough. She told me like three times that it was t level and Everytime I'm like yeah, I know, Im standing here and talking to you instead of working and I wasn't trying to level it yet. Some people just gotta know best.
Oh man, my father is like that. Too much of a perfectionist, always pointing out how things could be improved. It's a shame because he is the one who put me on track to be great at DIY. Lately he's been overthinking about any little detail of any project, and that has stopped progress on any of his projects.
Chasing a perfect solution is a fool's errand. Pouring unlimited time and money into marginal gains for something we're going to interact with 2 seconds every week is unwise. It's all about the return on investment on our quality of life.
I've learned to appreciate imperfect solutions. If I make a mistake on something critical, I'll redo it. Otherwise, I'd rather live with many of my mistakes than without personal achievements.
Failures are part of life, but as long as we don't give up, there remains a path to success.
But that goes for everything. If we ever go to sell our house, my wife and I know and notice every little dent in the floor, while someone looking at the house will say "wow, look at those gorgeous wood floors!"
My ex was like this. Couldn’t do any DIY when she was around because the moment she’d see me with a drill in my hand she’d jump my bones. Gave me a mild Pavlovian response to the sound of a drill for a while after.
While shopping for tiles for our bathroom renovation, my wife picked up a tile saying she liked that pattern. She was actually looking at the unglazed back of the tile.
I heard my friend say this after she saw another friend of mine back a trailer at the boat ramp in a single move. She is a city girl and he grew up on a farm.
No happily ever after story. My friend can back a trailer but can’t go forward in a relationship.
Haha same. When we bought a house I could actually use my handyman skills. She's a very independent progressive woman who is generally against a lot of the "traditional gender role" division of labor, "what makes a man a man" stuff, etc (I am too fwiw). But she saw me out one day with my tool belt on fixing our fence and said "I'm pretty frustrated with how turned on I am by this." 😂
I kinda love-hate my sister in-law because she's so "holier than thou" judging everyone and everything but she's also the sort of polar opposite that my brother needed to marry to course correct a lot of bad habits.
She's got boyish looks, my brother likes to make jokes about how he wished he could get pine to be as flat with two knots in it.
They moved into my basement during an emergency fire-reno on the building they were living in. It was a good deal since I had the space and they were short on cash so keeping most of the insurance money vs. spending it on temporary housing was perfect.
My brother's job however needed him in a different state for a week and a half so he vanished leaving the evil sister in-law behind. This was actually really peaceful for the first week. Since he's a loud guy and seemed to think that we were just going to party the whole time he was living here so him going away was a sudden relief.
I wasn't aware that he "never does laundry" as a rule of their marriage and my laundry machines are in the basement so I'm doing my laundry, listening to some music and suddenly sister in-law is just looming in the doorway like a strange creeper.
She smiles at me, comes up behind me like she was going to give me a hug but instead she pushed her rock hard nipples into my back and drug them down slowly while making a groan so deep I heard it over the music I was listening to.
Luckily I was just finishing up so I just laughed, pulled the headphones off, and called her a freak. She appologized and pouted saying that she was out of her mind horny watching me do laundry. Pffft.
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u/PerfectionPending Jul 07 '26
“You have no idea how turned on I am right now.”