So, when you go to decorate or redecorate in your home, how do you husbands and wives compromise?
Does the wife choose the colors etc and then be sure dh is ok with them?
Does your dh just let you take care of it?
Do you not care and your husband takes care of it?
Do you have ‘equal’ say? If you just can’t agree, who will likely compromise?
I have friends whose husbands let them have total control, others whose husbands want to have control and some in between.
Just curious really about how many men care a lot about how the home looks and how many are fine w/ the wife making those decisions.
In the past, I have just done it. When we moved, the change in house styles was so radical (1 story to 2 story, open floor plan to separate rooms) and I was so depressed that I haven’t gotten up a whole lot of interest in decorating. I feel that the entire house needs to be gutted and re-done so why spend a lot of time and money decorating now?
Hubby wants me to “just do it,” like I have in the past. It bothers him that I have not. At the moment I am more focused on the outside - this house has a HUGE backyard that I want to landscape - and he gets frustrated by that, evidently. He wants me to get busy IN the house but I have just not gotten much motivation to do that. Waiting for inspiration…but it’s slow in arriving. I spent 20 years in the last house, which was the entire time our kids were growing up. I INVESTED in that house. I don’t feel the same investment in this one, which makes it hard to care.
I do want to call in a decorator but I need to get some estimates on renovating first. Everything I can think of to do, from putting marble or granite around the fireplace, to painting, to redoing the kitchen countertops, can’t be done now if we are going to remodel. In the other house, I could get a couple of jobs done at a time and the result was that eventually, it all worked together, but I won’t start something if it has to be torn out a year later. For example, the kitchen and bathrooms and our closet all have fluorescent lights. I DESPISE them. But why install new light fixtures if we are going to rip out and remodel the room? So we are trying to get by for now and that involves me ignoring them while I think about the huge job of remodeling.
Hubby and I are different when it comes to furnishings too. I love antiques, because they have a history built in. I love to touch old wood and know that there have been lives lived in the company of that piece of furniture, especially old kitchen tables. When he thinks of antiques, hubby pictures huge old dark-stained wardrobes like the ones that fill English houses. He feels almost threatened by their looming presence. So we have some arguments about things like that. I like to buy things and then figure out where they are going in the house; he is forever asking me, “Where are you going to put it?” If I like the piece well enough, I will throw something else out to give it a home!
In the end, though, if one of us strongly objects, that’s the end of the discussion. If he says “No,” to something I want to do, I will not do it. If I say, “No,” he drops it. Usually, both of us will listen to the other and try to find a common ground.
It has an appropriate amount of “feminine” and “masculine”. It all blends together well and looks like we spent a lot more money than we did. It took a great deal of effort and compromise from both of us to make it look like it blends effortlessly.