Show me a couple in the third month of a remodel, and I’ll show you a couple who wants separate houses. Take my husband and me. Well, you may not want me, but at the moment, you’re welcome to him. Every comment one of us makes lately about our basement remodel degenerates into a blame fest.
“Maybe we should have hired a contractor,” I recently mused.
“Well, if we had, we would have that bar top by now,” implying, of course, that I dropped the ball.
“I told you. The bar top guy’s voice message box has been full for two weeks.”
“I told you to start calling months ago.”
“Wait! How did an innocent comment about hiring a contractor turn into a personal attack?”
“That wasn’t innocent. You were blaming me for not hiring a contractor.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Was so.”
“Was not.”
“Harrumph!”
“Jeesh!”
To Rachel Cox, a therapist in Palo Alto, Calif., who specializes in counseling couples going through home remodels – now there’s a necessary niche – this exchange sounds oh-so-familiar. “When couples fight over home remodeling,” she says, “the argument always has more to do with the relationship than the project. Remodeling brings stuff up. An argument about doorknobs is really an argument about control and hurt feelings.”
Right! Insulted, I take the offensive: “So why didn’t you call the bar top guy?” I ask.
“Because you’re the one who works from home and needs to schedule him.” Grrr. I hate when he gets all logical on me.
This scene sounds familiar to Cox, too. “If women aren’t the primary breadwinners, they typically manage the project, because they’re home more,” she says. This starts out all right, until the woman realizes the project has hijacked her life. Plus how can she anticipate the hassles of the power going out, the dog getting loose, men climbing in and out her windows at all hours, and cooking out of a microwave in the bathroom?
“She gets frustrated,” continues Cox. “Then he gets angry because more isn’t getting done. Husbands are always asking wives, ‘What’s taking so long?’ Wives are always saying, ‘You have no idea.”‘
“Exactly,” I say to Cox. I feel better already, but can’t help wondering if she’s been spying on us.
Three months in, the woman’s good humor is as shot as the elastic in last season’s swimsuit. The man’s has seen money spent faster than he can earn it, and she still hasn’t picked tile. They’re both fried and blaming each other. “I’ve seen some real blow-ups,” she says.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marnijameson.com.
Therapist Rachel Cox’s advice for couples considering, or in the midst of, remodeling:
Get comfortable with discomfort. “Remodeling is uncomfortable in every way,” she says, “financially, physically and emotionally.” Tempers flare faster. Just knowing that helps couples cope.
Keep your eye on the ball. Know at the end of your ordeal you will have a beautiful home.
Understand how men and women differ when stressed. Women want to talk about the problems. Men want to pull away and suffer alone. To help each other through, women need to talk less, and men need to listen more when women do vent.
Schedule a weekly project meeting. (This assumes you’re speaking to each other.) Don’t discuss the project at other times unless something is urgent. Weekly round-ups let women filter and prioritize information, and men don’t have to hear the blow by blow.
Don’t take your marital strife out on the workers. “If you get too nasty or condescending, workers might turn passive aggressive and make matters worse,” says Cox.
Respect what matters to your mate. Men, for example, typically want bigger spaces, while women want finer finishes. “I’ve had couples argue that because he wanted to enlarge the bathroom, they couldn’t afford the $21-a-foot accent tile she wanted to make the bathroom of her dreams.”
Know when the odds are against you. A survey conducted by Service Magic, a nationwide network of home improvement experts, asked nearly 500 contractors who they thought made most home remodel decisions. Fifty-five percent said women; 28 percent said the couple did jointly, and only 17 percent thought it was the man. What I’d like to know is how many, by the end of the project, asked for separate bedrooms, or separate houses.
