I wish this would stop escalating

[Fanatical Meat]

For maximum effect do a video evidence saying you warned her and thate she understands the consequences.

I have the opposite problem. She wants something done like building a low brick retaining wall and I agree it is a good job. She then assumes I am an operative mason and can handle this in an afternoon. The run would be 15-20 feet of four foot high wall, 8 or so feet of two feet high, 5 feet of one foot high.
That is a lot of bricks to move when you’ve never done this before. She also has trouble envisioning volumes, distances and support. She thinks this is a tiny run of wall that would need a couple dozen bricks. She doesn’t understand why the wall needs to go underground a bit for support. She believes the bricks are heavy enough to keep it from falling, which I highly doubt.

Another great example is my resurface the deck with trex project. I was reading, researching basically spending time to know what I am doing. One day she’s like get this done, so I said okay and ordered the boards. We get a bank alert about a $800 Lowes charge and she is pissed why did you spend that much. I said you are an accountant $35 per board and we have 20 boards. I went over this many times. She says “I thought we were just replacing the four broken boards”

ugh....I spoke about this so much with her. I assumed she knew it would be weird to replace four of twenty boards with a totally different material......

I love her so much, I find it so humorous we describe and see things so differently.

 

[dullard]

The escalation is what I actually like about projects.

When my wife helps me with projects, things just take forever to do because she refuses any form of escalation. In your dryer vent case, she would have steadfastly refused to let the dryer be moved, so I'd have to come up with some absurdly clumsy way to clean the vent without moving the dryer. At the end of the day, we'll both be frustrated and we might have a slightly cleaner vent.

But when I'm working alone, I can just wonder from project to project, doing whatever is the most important at the moment or whatever will let me do the primary job in a quick and easy manor. At the end of the day, I'll have a dozen projects finished and a squeaky clean dryer vent.

 

[MtnMan]

Years ago, I undertook a small plumbing project. This was the era of the neighborhood hardware store, no Lowe's or Home Depot.

Second trip to the hardware store, the owner said, 'ah... a three trip to the hardware store project?'… I said it may well be, but I won't give you the satisfaction, I'll go to a different hardware store.

 

[dullard]

Years ago, I undertook a small plumbing project. This was the era of the neighborhood hardware store, no Lowe's or Home Depot.

Second trip to the hardware store, the owner said, 'ah... a three trip to the hardware store project?'… I said it may well be, but I won't give you the satisfaction, I'll go to a different hardware store.

I am pretty sure that most plumbing projects are three trips to the store. That seems to be the case for my friends, my family, and myself.

It is almost inevitable that once you get into the project that at least one of the following will happen (a) the scope is bigger than you expect once you take things apart, (b) the parts are not the standard size that you assumed when you bought the parts, (c) the "compatible with ..." statement on the part box is not correct, (d) some part is missing from the brand new box, (e) you forgot to buy something, (f) you have to return the things that didn't work the first time, (g) you break something along the way, (h) the longest length part sold in the store is still not long enough, (i) the shortest part sold in the store is not short enough, etc.

The worst cases for me were when I found out that the gasket from the toilet to the tank is a specialty order part for the toilets in my house. After trying every home improvement store in town, I finally found a commercial plumbing store that luckily had one leftover from another project. Or when I replaced the part with the exact same part to find out that it actually didn't fit because it was installed incorrectly to begin with. Those types of things are hard to predict requiring multiple trips.

 

[Muse]

I love her so much, I find it so humorous we describe and see things so differently.

You might try doing a few projects TOGETHER. If you are buddy buddy sharing all aspects of the projects you should both ultimately appreciate all aspects of it including how many of what is needed (and why), how much they cost and in the end the cost of the project will be understood by both. It may not be as efficient a use of time but she would gain a lot of perspective on those kinds of projects and what they entail. Just my idea, I generally work solo, live alone.

 

[Muse]

I am pretty sure that most plumbing projects are three trips to the store. That seems to be the case for my friends, my family, and myself.

My last was two trips. Turned out the nut on the trap I bought from them was a smaller size than the one that was needed and the guy just took mine, walked back in the store and came out with the right size, handed it to me and we were done. They are really cool old Asian guys running the store, a small Truevalue HW about 1/4 miles from me and I ride my bicycle there. I bought my new kitchen faucet from them, what a deal! $65, ceramic valves, beautiful. Problem was I needed to take off the old faucet hardware right down to the galvanized nipples out the wall and those were in real bad shape and needed replacing. That was a nightmare.

 

[brianmanahan]

what about escalation?

 

[PingSpike]

My wife always asks why I roll my eyes when she decides we have another project to do. I say I'll explain later. When she starts complaining about how much work her part of the project is I ask her if she remembers when I rolled my eyes.

My wife does that but then leaves piles of garbage all over the place for me to clean up because apparently since I have a penis I'm the only one qualified to put trash in the trash can.

 

[PingSpike]

I took a break from some computer work 3 months ago and decided to fix a slow leak from my kitchen faucet. Cap on cold water valve had trouble gripping when replaced so I added teflon tape to tighten it up. I started doing my dishes in the sink and the thing blew clean off (90lb pressure here!) and I was OMG what do I do? Hand on faucet top to stop the 5 foot geyser. Tied a sponge on the top with a giant plastic bag at hand, turned off water to the house, bought new faucet at local HW store, couldn't install it because the nipple out the wall had deteriorated (galvanized and super old). Bought die to try to repair threads on nipple, no soap. Bought diamond hole saws so I could recess the die into the wall enough to get the nipple to accept the new faucet, still no soap. Called plumber friend (just retired) who came over and we couldn't get the old nipple out the wall with internal pipe wrench.

Finally went to Yelp and got plumbers calling me left and right, a couple came over next day, the second one removed the nipple with a better internal pipe wrench, then went after the cold water one and it was even worse. All this time I'd had cold water but now I would have none until both nipples were replaced. I had to accept his $350 offer, had him install my water pressure valve for another $350. He was out the door with my $700 after being here for 2 hours and 10 minutes!

I try not to involve myself at all with plumbing. I'd say "I don't do plumbing" but lets face it I still have to interact with it some. My friends have to many stories about DIY plumbing projects that turning into DIY drywall replacement projects. I'm not a big DIY guy to begin with the plumbing just fills me with stress!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I did the mistake of trying to do plumbing at night. Instead of a trip to the hardware store it was a plea on Facebook hoping someone is up and has the part they need and they I'd offer to pay double what it's worth just to save myself. (cheaper than calling a plumber at night)

I'm normally good at soldering, but for whatever reason with this particular pipe it was just not working out at all and kept leaking. I gave up and did the whole thing with shark bite fittings. Never been a huge fan of shark bite as it feels like cheating, but damn did they save my ass lol.

 

[Muse]

I try not to involve myself at all with plumbing. I'd say "I don't do plumbing" but lets face it I still have to interact with it some. My friends have to many stories about DIY plumbing projects that turning into DIY drywall replacement projects. I'm not a big DIY guy to begin with the plumbing just fills me with stress!

TBH, I've done a lot of plumbing but only minor stuff. I bought a pressure reducing valve almost 2 years ago with the intention of installing it myself but didn't get around to it. The $700 I handed to a plumber a few weeks ago was the first time in my life I've paid a plumber, if you don't count the time ~10 years ago I needed a trenchless sewer job that escalated into a coinciding water main replacement (they broke mine but told me that was unavoidable). It was paid for with an interest free loan from my town, not out of my pocket... yet.

The plumbing stuff I've done on my own includes 2 bathroom sink replacements (including buying and installing new faucets) here, trap replacements, washers in faucets (dozens of times), insulating the hot water pipes in the house's crawl space with foam, kitchen faucet replacement, toilet repairs of various kinds, valve replacements. I installed a washing machine, too, a supplemental side-sink to the washer as well (picked that up at Home Depot). Most of that stuff isn't too hard.

I've never sweated copper water pipes, but have observed it being done and I'm pretty confident I could/can do it. When that guy fixed my kitchen sink faucet scene a few weeks ago I had him install the pressure reducing valve... I'd intended to do that myself but had had ZERO copper pipe sweating experience and figured I shouldn't get my feet wet with that job. Besides, I have the money now, so I just said, fuck it, have him do it before he leaves. Funny thing is when the trenchless sewer job was done ~10 years ago and they replaced my water main they offered to include installing a pressure reducing valve for an extra $100 (including the valve) and I said no. I had no idea if it was a good idea or not. I should have said YESSSSSSSS! It cost me around $440!

Edit: My house could use a total repiping and the guy who fixed my kitchen sink a few weeks ago quoted me $7000 to do it. I'd do it now but for the fact that the walls would need to be fixed and I figure that's a big big deal. This house is 111 years old, they didn't do wallboard back then. There's a lot of lath and plaster, practically all, I guess. I might have it done anyway, maybe I can do some of the wall fixing. Once I get into a project I have a lot of capability. I have a lot of tools! There's a tool lending library (free) a couple blocks from me too!

I'm still not done with the kitchen sink, though. Even before the faucet fiasco I was into the project of fixing the sink surround, I have 1/2 the tiles removed all this time. I want to do that job before most anything else.

A guy here in Home and Garden had an idea how I could fix my kitchen sink problem I had this spring with parts I could buy at Home Depot and install with the use of oxy-acetylene torch, he linked me to a set at Amazon. I was strongly considering doing that, although I wasn't confident it would work or that I would do the work well enough. Having no experience welding beyond propane and Mapp gas, I decided to get an actual plumber. Two of my friends had leaned on me to call a plumber, one is a just retired plumber, the other has owned two houses and done most of his own work. He was really ragging on me. I finally gave in and went to Yelp. A day later, the job was done, but I had a big charge on my credit card.