Love this, except for us, it was when the low voltage guys showed up to the speaker wiring :-)

(*snort*) Too true. We went bold with some of our remodeling decisions, especially paint selections and uber-contemporary lighting, but when friends who haven't seen the house request a tour, DH drones on and on about.....the central air (duct placement, air handlers, condensers, returns, my eyelids are heavy just listing it all).

This thead should have come with a spew alert. Too funny! After we built, DH loved to talk about the whole-house water filter, the french drains, the outside connection for the generator, and all that stuff too. Couldn't give a rip about the paint, cabinets, or 'decorator' stuff inside. All I got was an Um-hmmmm.

Thanks for the chuckle and the reminder that I am not alone. My husband saw no humor in this thread!!

LOL! (Though, gotta say, I think this is less about being male or female and more about our individual wiring. I have women friends who couldn't give a rip and male friends who love to talk this stuff.)

That being said, in my house, we fall along traditional lines, for better or worse.

Last year when we did the energy audit/outside work, we replaced the furnace with a European boiler system. My partner put up sealed plywood on the enterior walls of the furnace closet - and an LED light to give that nice glow. It became -the- thing to show off - and the men are duly impressed by the cadillac system in this little house. There's room for him to stand in there in the middle of it all and I call it the man cave. We joke that we'll have to keep cigars in there...

Meanwhile, when I try to get him to look at a picture of some spectacular kitchen on the net, I can barely draw his eye.

My favorite story, though, is when we first moved in. I had 5 shades of yellow on the walls and was trying to get him to stand there and contemplate them with me. He finally said: "Listen, I'll prep the walls. I'll paint them, in ANY color you choose. If you don't like it, I'll REPAINT it, in any color you choose. This, even though I HATE PAINTING. But please, don't make me talk about paint chips and the various qualities of this or that."

I was sad... lol

:) Thanks for the laughs, all of you. Our son IS a low-voltage contractor, and when they found a house with a large basement with a tall ceiling he could INSTALL dropped panels on (!0 and run and repair low voltage systems to his heart's content, that was the one. Who knew? Aside from our poor DIL, of course.

This totally made me laugh. It reminds me of a conversation I had with DH this weekend- a little off this tangent but pertinent.

Along with our kitchen remodel, we are replacing carpet with hardwood in our living and dining room. My older son mentioned that he needed a couch for his college apartment. I offered him our living room furniture thinking a) what a great way to get rid of this 23 year old furniture (outdated fabric that I slipcovered) and not have to store it b) supply him with furniture without he having to buy furniture. My DH heard about it and his response is "Why are we giving away furniture we don't use only to buy more furniture we don't use." I assured him that every woman in the world would be doing the same thing but if he wanted to trade me in he could find out.

Older son is getting the furniture and I am not getting traded in.

Love all the comments. We are remodeling our kitchen, and I got the same responses - esp. about paint. Thought my DH was the only one! thanks for the chuckles.

All you have to do to know that it isn't a strict M/F issue is to read Marcolo's posts about his finish choices and frustrating search for samples. And if I (F) were ever to have the resources to build my own house, I would go on and on about the passive solar design, ground-source heat pump, and gray-water system. And the finishes and design choices.

My ex cared about the finishes, but he couldn't be bothered to think about them for more than 3 minutes at a time. So I would obsess and he would veto. Worst of all possible worlds.

Love this thread! I sympathize with corgimum - out LR furniture is 28 years old but since we never use the LR it is in perfect condition. My husband thinks it "looks fine". In fact, as far as he is concerned, everything in our 28 year old house "looks fine".

My DH gets teary eyed over a quality spackle job

My dh doesn't want to talk about paint color either and he's in the business!

When bldg our house, DH and I were great complements...we'd go to a model home and he'd be all over the mechanicals and I'd be all over the decor. We both would be interested in the layout.

Granted, it's not all men or women, but as a generalization, if I'm giving directions, men do well when I say turn by the tire store or take a left at the muffler shop. Women do better when I say turn by the boutique or take a left at the nail salon. If I reverse that, they won't know where I'm talking about.

Car talk guys said it differently the other day...all husbands are alike, so you might as well stick with the one you got!
:)

Oh yes. So true. My dh cannot let go of the fact that Zone 2's (2nd Floor's) system has 2 vents located on the first floor. I don't know why this is the way the hvac company did it, but it has become a slight obsession for him as to "why", "how can I fix", "what were they thinking?" And yes, it is often a topic of discussion when company comes.

And Pal, regarding placement of switches etc, can you believe I let my dh and the speaker guy have free reign to decide where the speakers and the volume switches were going? Oh boy. Good thing I got here when they were actually running the wires. And of course the hvac guys put the thermostat in the MIDDLE of the dining room wall. I nipped that one in the bud. Wouldn't you know.... I turned my back when the towel bar/toilet paper holder guy was here...he already knew about me, due to our extensive conversations of NOT putting up towel bars, but what happened?...he installed the tp holder for the powder room right there, across from the door, plain view from the hallway vs putting it on the vanity so you can't see it. We now have a big bucket of spackle in that room...waiting to fill the holes where the tp holder was. ; )

LOL.
I do a gender difference lecture and will have to add these stories!

beekeeperswife, my dh is obsessing about the electrician putting the refrigerator and freezer on the same circuit as 3 plugs on the opposite wall. He wanted the fridge and freezer on their own circuit.

When dh sent me to HD the other day for a whatzit, I took a picture of the whatzit before I left along with the whozit that the whatzit had to fit. When I showed the guy at HD my camera screen, he laughed and said that was the difference in men and women - men would show up and try to describe what they wanted and women bring a picture, diagram, or a duplicate of the thing.

Oh, lord. Switch placement. Two lousy feet (2'!) feet to the right of our front door is a small hall, so I set the foyer switches right around the corner in the hall to keep it nice. DH and I just swing a hand around to hit the porch light, or whatever, but that doesn't keep my son and husband from offering it up as a classic "MY wife" type story whenever conversation heads that way.

They both care about aesthetics, BTW, just like Cawaps worst of all possible worlds, but the awful dysfunction is just too much for them to get over.

I also had them put a central systems bank for the house at a crossroads where the stairwell up and down intersects the horizontal path between living and dining rooms and kitchen. They WANT to complain about it, but it works great, so content themselves telling guys what it was like to fulfill my clueless request to stuff 12 controls tidily between 2 studs instead of spreading them across the wall. Another hit story with just the right crowd.

Sometimes I wish my DH didn't care about design aesthetics. Although he does have taste, compromise doesn't always produce the best results. That's why my anniversary gift wasn't just the new kitchen, it was the right to pick everything for the new kitchen.

I do completely agree with palimpsest, though, about setting a room up optimally and then leaving it that way until something wears out or breaks. I don't rearrange furniture or change out all the accessories, although I had a neighbor who did this regularly. I wonder if it's an idea promulgated by those HGTV design shows. I could see doing that if you start with less expensive decorative things, then change them out for, say, antiques or fine art as you can afford it. But once you have beautiful things, why put them away?

I will happily wax poetic about a perfect HVAC install as soon as I find a contractor capable of doing one. The original incompetent finally got booted when he programmed my AC compressor to turn on at the same time as the heat. His highly-recommended replacement, after being sternly warned about his predecessor's being chased off the property like a revenuer with a junkyard dog after him, promptly shut down the entire AC unit and then jostled a fan out of alignment making my house now sound like a Vespa.

So, as soon as I see a piece of elegant work, I'll be sure to report back. If they still have the Internet then.

"My DH gets teary eyed over a quality spackle job:"

ROFLOL!!!
I (female) do, too, while my totally male husband wouldn't know the difference.

Thanks for the chuckle, deedles. Now that it's fantasy football draft season, I'm finding that DH agrees with most anything I want to do. His mind is on something more important -- betting on who's the best at tossing, kicking, or catching a ball on a field. Fine with me!

Remodelfla: ahahahahaaaa. That's too funny. These are all funny.

I totally get that there are some exceptions to the rule but... well, not in MY house, lol.

And, isn't it a good thing, the differences between men and women...and any partnership that comes from two totally different POV?

Read this once and it stuck: "if two people are exactly alike, one of them in not necessary".

Love the stories, though!

Oh. And yeah, the switches/plugs. Small powder room. 3 switches and one GFI plug.

Me: so, now we need a light cover for 3 switches and one gfi, right?"

DH: "what?"

Me (louder): we need a cover for 3 switches and one gfi in the powder room, right?"

DH: "no, you need two covers. One for the 3 switches and one for the gfi plug right under the 3 switches."

me: "Why wouldn't you just put them in the same box instead of putting them stacked like that?"

DH: Cause I only had a box that fit 3."

me: "*sigh*"

Dh: "what?"

Marti - how true!!
Love the stories - when I have time, I will add some of my own!

Oh gosh, let's pour the wine and keep going with these stories....

and my DH just asked what's so funny on my computer screen, lol.

Fair warning...OT

A2gemini, if you haven't seen the stuff by Pat Heim on gender differences, check it out...she's terrif!

Mine's the same way.

We'd been planning to replace the kitchen floor because we found out a pipe underneath it had a few cracks and we'd have to tear a good portion of it up anyway (1950's cast iron). There I am lining up samples of flooring and comparing the pros/cons of wood vs. tile and he's watching the video from the camera they put through our pipe that shows the cracks and talking to his buddy about it with an amazing amount of enthusiasm for my lowkey husband. His words: "this is the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life! It's amazing!"

Huh.

Amazing.

Hmmm, so I fuss over "girl" AND "guy" stuff. When it came time to have our electrical box upgraded from the old 100 amp service to the 200 amp service...I was the one asking the questions to the electrician. When our electrician was here this weekend to replace an old light switch that sizzled and fried (littlerally...black smoke coming out and everything!), I was right there, asking him about it. And I LOVE that he explained it to me as a human and not as "okay, little lady, here's what's up with it."

When we were getting ready to build a house a few years ago...it was me that fussed over the dual zone heating. And me that fussed over the geothermal heat pump. And me that was asking about the relative advantages and disadvantages of Superior Walls vs. standard foundations. My husband came along for the ride on most of that.

In our house, in many cases, I do the research (be it "male" or "female" based. Narrow down the choices to what I find acceptable. Present findings to DH and then we work on finding a decision.

But, me, heck yeah, I'm going to be SO excited (seriously!) when it comes time for us to have the HVAC people in to replace our old furnace. But, I'm a little odd like that.

Great thread! Love these stories.

My DH spent 10 minutes going on and on at several occasions about how hard it was to select the indoor speaker system for our addition/reno - there were SO MANY brands and they all had strengths and weaknesses. It took him WEEKS to decide, it was an EXHAUSTING process.

Meanwhile, I reworked the architect's plans, picked out a new roof, exterior paint colors, windows, and garage doors - as well as selected every appliance, cabinet, countertop, floor stain, and paint color for the entire first floor.

I am thinking I just have better shopping endurance from all my years of (Olympic) training!

Omg, what a great thread. I am definitely the researcher, to the point where I am drafted into DH's research on things I have no interest in.

If I get past two sentences in a row about the kitchen, I get the deer in headlights look. But at least I get to pick what I want. Our wedding was the same way. DH had no interest in any of it. Except the cake. He picked the cake, and whenever the wedding comes up in any conversation he launches into a 20 minute dissertation about how great the cake he picked was.

I'm sure he'll take an interest in something for the kitchen. Then it will be endless lectures on the faucet, or knob style, or lightbulbs, or whatever crazy thing he latches on to!

Marcolo, I'm so sorry - like a Vespa? I'd love to know how you got rid of HVAC guy #2

This is so much fun reading everybody's comments!

I have to admit, the engineer in me came out when I had to decide where I wanted outlets. I cannot stand having to contort my body to plug in something behind a dresser, so I walked thru each room with the electrician and told him where I wanted outlets. I probably broke the electrical budget with that one, but we have never have a problem wondering where to plug in something. Sweet! I smile every time I think about it. Bee, I absolutely forbid anyone to install any towel bars or TP holders. We put them in ourselves after we moved in.

There's a leather recliner in the man cave that I probably won't ever be able to get rid of because there's 'nothing wrong with it'. How many times have we heard that one ladies? I'm working on it though, hee, hee!

My DH was fantastic letting me decide what I wanted in my new kitchen. Our kitchen remodel then morphed into a whole house remodel (still not done).

I quickly decided I couldn't keep making all the decisions, so delegated woodwork, interior doors and door hardware to him. Soooooo he was very proud of himself when he brought home oak trim and shiny BRASS door handles. YUCK! I told him the shiny brass looks cheap and trashy.
He looked right at ME and said "I love cheap and trashy". LOL funny man!