I do believe I have the laziest man on earth when it comes to DIY.  My man is a peach, works very hard, sometimes 7 days a weak, but will NOT get involved in anything to do with the house.  This leaves it all firmly in my lap (I also work full time).  Last year we had our kitchen "done" - it was very expensive, and there was some decorating to do at the end of it.  I did the lot myself.  There were just two things left to be done.  A small amount of Artex in the lounge and the door in the hallway to be painted.  OH did the artexing - six months later - and I started putting the undercoat on the door in the hall.  OH, feeling a little guilty that he had been sitting on his ar*e for 2 hours, offered to help me by finishing off the undercoat.  I succumbed and he promptly got u/coat on my brand new carpet........aarrgghhh.

Kindly keep all sharp objects out of my reach.

Honey, I do soooooooooo understand what you mean (I'm still waiting for him to do something about those purple bricks in my porch..........)

I sympathise as well. And I have now found a foolproof way of making him do it without nagging ;)

I give him a reasonable amount of time to do it (1 month) and then I warn him that I am going to call in a "professional" to do it. If said warning doesn't get his a*** in gear, I call them the next day and get them in to do the job. The look on his face when he gets home and has found the job done and when I present him with the bill is priceless :D The last job cost him £280 and he's still going on about it 4 months later :P BUT, I have seen a vast improvement :P

I tell my husband - if its not done by such & such a day I will get a PROPER MAN in to do it!

he soon gets on with it.

He is allways doing jobs for others though - grrrrrr

Jo
xxx

Mine's all talk and no action - when he finally agreed to clear out the spare room I thought he was a bit quiet.  When I went upstairs he was sitting playing stick cricket on the computer!  Men.

CG

I do all the DIY in our house I was surprised when I met OH as he cant do DIY cant fix my car when it breaks my dad could do everything and now when he comes to visit he spends most of the time doing my diy.
I am really glad Oh doesnt attempt diy as everything he touches he ruins.
Mary

Im so glad its not just mine! Mine works a full time job mon-fri but wont have anything to do with the house, he dreams, but he never actually does anything about it. Mine is 26 and his life still only revolves around the PC and PS2! I think ive got 2 kids not 1!! When he leaves his stuff all over too, ive started leavin em there and it all piles up n i make him feel guilty as its only HIS stuff thats left laying there.

I know how your all feeling ...my hubby watches all the diy programmes and ground force all day ...but somehow can't put it into practice..........

In an effort to stick up for the male species I must stick my oar in :)  My OH is pretty good at doing DIY, having put in our kitchen all by himself (with the exception of the worktops, as it would have cost as much to hire the tools to do it as it did to hire someone else to do it!), and re-decorating the living room.  He also tends to do these things as a surprise, ie, when tiling the kitchen on his day off he called me at work and said that the tiles were really difficult and he wasn't getting far, and when I came home from work he'd done the lot. But hey, when he makes a sandwich the lid is left off the marg, out on the side, crumbs everywhere, dirty knife left out etc etc etc - no-one's perfect :D :D :D  Oh, and I AM still waiting for him to grout one little corner of the tiles that he simply couldn't be bothered to do at the time - that little job should get finished in a year or so ;) :)

Aaahhhhh! Don't talk to me about men in the kitchen!!!  Crumbs??  Mine can't make a sandwich without leaving the kitchen looking like an explosion in a crumb factory. And the dog chomping round the floor hoovering up all the dropped bits.  And don't even go there on the dishes.  I mean, why fill up the washing up bowl with water/suds/dishes and then not wash them?  Just leave them to turn into a bowl of liquid cold grease - yuk. Moan moan moan moan.  He does cut the grass though :) (and clean up the dog poo).

CG

Bless him!  My OH cleaned up our dog's diarrhoea mess in the bedroom at 1.30am the other morning.  I couldn't do it because I'd been drinking and was still rather pi***d LOL :D  I just laid there thinking 'aw, he'll make a good dad!'  I'm gonna drink every night when we've got kids and leave ALL the smelly midnight nappies for him :D :D :D

I agree with most of the above posts. My OH is dire when it comes to DIY. But in his defence I think it's because his Dad is very good at all that stuff and he never got the chance to learn. He is slowly learning though, he tiled my bathroom but the look of disgust on his face was fantastic when he got tile adhesive on his hands. I did the grouting afterwards as I think he would have had heart-failure. We are intending to tackle the half finished bathroom in the next couple of days! Plus I want my Living room redecorated too, oh and the garden has to be done as well :D :D.
My problem is though that I was spoilt as my ex-hubby was fabulous at DIY so much so that he hand made bedroom furniture for the girls and I only had to mention wallpaper and it was done.  I have become very self sufficient and can do curtain rails , shelves, wallpaper, painting, I even plumbed in my dishwasher and washing machine. We were kindly given a dog guard and tailgate from a friend and has it been fitted yet? My brother in law has cut and fitted the Guard to size but the tailgate is still sitting on the backseat of the car. It'll maybe be fitted some day. My OH also loves his PS2 and would quite happily spend all day playing it. Well garden needs tackled this morning first, 3 dogs = lots of pooh and lots of disinfectant! I'll no doubt end up doing it on my own, since OH is playing PS2 as I type!!!

Well I'm glad to say that I married a man very much like my dad in that he can turn his hand to any DIY job in the house :)
The only thing he hasn't a clue about, though, is cars. So I'm the one who has to check the oil, water, tyres etc. He's never even put petrol in the tank - mind you he doesn't drive so at least his lack of interest is consistent :)

My husband started my extension 5 years ago and all went well until he discovered dog showing 3 years ago.  I actually considered divorcing him just so I could get it finished in order for us to sell.  He has now reached roof level and we have been dealing with the roofer from hell.  At least now he has promised he wont do anything else ;)

my hubby is a plumber so is my son so why have i been waiting nearly a year to get my new shower fitted?

my hubby fitted the new kitchen himself plumbing electrics wonderful he is a joiner by trade but can turn his hand to anything he knocked the wall down between the toilet and bathroom and fitted new suite plus shower cublicle in all by himself (apart from me passing him this and that) but if I want rooms decorating I would wait forever he hates papering so my trick is while he is at work I strip the rooms I want doing and start doing it myself (like all us ladies quite capable) he always ends up doing it himself.This has worked for the last twenty years without fail.Its the little finishing touch jobs that they never finish that wind me up.

My hubby is a little angel :) He can do everything (wiring, plumbing, carpentry, decorating etc etc) - all self-taught. He's not as quick as he used to be as he's nearing 60 - but I'm pleased, as he used to be a real pain when the children were small :D He would arrive home at, say, 9pm after having been abroad for a couple of days, then go upstairs and get the hammer drill going :D Fortunately my children learnt to sleep through everything as sometimes he'd even be working until 1am in their bedrooms :D

Daisy

Well, I sure opened the proverbial can of worms there eh?  My OH does work hard at his job, therefore he believes he is entitled to sit on his fat bum the rest of the time.  He can cook, and I have to admit I have never cooked a Christmas dinner.  However, if I just left him in front of the TV all day, with easy access to the PS2, I wouldn't hear a peep.  Perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all, but I do get just a tad p*ssed off when I have to pay out hard-earned cash to so called professionals to come and to the job for him.  He won't even mow the damn lawn.......and it's tiny!  I've tried everything to encourage him to help, but he believes that if he earns the money to pay for someone to come in and do the job, then why should he do it.  Perhaps it's a generation/age thing - I am 5 years older than him - and my mother brought me up to "work" in the home to make it nice.  At this precise moment, he's lounging on the reclining sofa, arms underneath his head, watching the new 50 inch plasma and trying to decide which takeaway we should have for dinner, even though I have offered to cook mushroom risotto.  Sorry to rant - just gets my goat sometimes.........

Just a thought - some people are couch potatoes - mine's couch mash!

My husbands a kitchen fitter, people say ''you must have a nice kitchen''
I wish I did. We have been at our present home for nearly 4 years and so far he has taken off all the tiles & plaster, so that we are left with bare ruff bricks.
Then there is the bathroom, he decided that the toilet and bathroom rooms which were next to each other were to small, so he took the wall down.
Since last Easter we have had in our spare bedroom a bathroom suite, taps, tiles for floor and for walls (tiles on the wall for the whole bathroom so that it never has to be decorated again)
He now wants me to choose a bathroom suite for our 2nd bathroom, but I cannt see the point, and he says its my fault, Im holding him back from getting on.

The trouble is, I have been in this situation before, 2 houses ago we bought a house that wanted doing up, it took him 9 years to finish putting in a new kitchen and a new bathroom.
So when we moved to our last house, I firmly said never again and we bought a new house, but all he did was to critazise it, this kitchen is badly fitted, the tiles in the bathroom did the builders get a proper tiler to do this.

We decided to move for the last time, and our present house came up, but it needed a lot of work doing on it. I said NO im not going threw that again. He promised me over and over again that he would get on with it, no excuses this time. It was a lovely house so I agreed, and we bought it.
I have to say when he finishes a job it looks very professional.

So here I am again, wish me luck everyone that he gets on with jobs, and I dont have to wait to long for my perfect house.

My husbands a kitchen fitter, people say ''you must have a nice kitchen''
I wish I did. We have been at our present home for nearly 4 years and so far in the kitchen he has taken off all the tiles & plaster, so that we are left with bare ruff bricks.
Then there is the bathroom, he decided that the toilet and bathroom rooms which were next to each other were to small, so he took the wall down.
Since last Easter 2004 we have had in our spare bedroom a bathroom suite, taps, tiles for floor and for walls (tiles on the wall for the whole bathroom so that it never has to be decorated again)
He now wants me to choose a bathroom suite for our 2nd bathroom, but I cannt see the point, and he says its my fault, Im holding him back from getting on.

The trouble is, I have been in this situation before, 2 houses ago we bought a house that wanted doing up, it took him 9 years to finish putting in a new kitchen and a new bathroom.
So when we moved to our last house, I firmly said never again and we bought a new house, but all he did was to critazise it, this kitchen is badly fitted, the tiles in the bathroom did the builders get a proper tiler to do this.

We decided to move for the last time, and our present house came up, but it needed a lot of work doing on it. I said NO im not going threw that again. He promised me over and over again that he would get on with it, no excuses this time. It was a lovely house so I agreed, and we bought it.
I have to say when he finishes a job it looks very professional.

So here I am again, wish me luck everyone that he gets on with jobs, and I dont have to wait to long for my perfect house.

Please ignore my first post, i missed out a few words.

My husband is locally known as Arfer, he do's half a job and leaves it, all the grandchildren know it is a grandad job when it takes 2 years to  do anything in the house, he was a painter and decorator before he retired, now my daughter do's the decorating for us jost to make sure it gets done

my OH watches every house programme and garden programme going !!!!!!!!! but thats all he does is WATCH ..........

think i'll trade him in for Tommy .....ahhhh in my dreams :)

My husband is hopeless at any DIY. He doesnt know one end of a screwdriver from the other.20 years ago,. when we first got together and bought an old house,he assured me he loved to paint,so I foolishly let him loose with a big tin of white gloss to paint all the bedroom doors.I came home from work to find all the paint running in rivers down the doors,paint over all the carpets where it had dripped off,paint in the bath,and paint from his shoes on every step on my brand new red stair carpet.Last year he insisted on painting the fence round the house,and I thought Well its only grass,doesnt matter if he drips it. Wrong!!he got paint all over the pavement and tried to wipe it off. So now when I am giving anyone directions to my house I say "The one with the  red paint on the pavement outside lol.

My hubby's got .......... his Dad for the DIY jobs :rolleyes: