If my late DH were still here, we'd have probably disagreed on most of the changes I made--esp. painting wood, heaven forbid. I'd gladly take back the golden oak and tile if he were part of the deal. Remember to keep things in the proper perspective. :)

My husband is the opposite. I said I'd like to paint the kitchen ONE DAY. He woke up the next morning and wanted to know if I was planning on calling the painters that morning.:/ He's really the reason we have done so much to our house. I'm very frugal so I can see why your husband thinks the way he does. My husband hounds me to death in little ways until I give in. He would say,"I was watching House Hunters and the people looking at this house said the first thing they'd do is rip up the tile. Guess what?! It's the same tile we have." Or, "Wow, this tile sure is slippery." He goes on and on until I give in. You could try that route until he breaks, lol.

LOL jjdcl. I do point out dated tile when we are watching tv, and then how similar it is to ours. It's really a shame to update everything and have the old tile.

Linelle, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm trying to keep things in perspective, really I am.

The extra tile, is that the only reason he wants to keep the tile? If that is the case, there is always e-bay or you could donate it and take the tax write-off. Are you sure there are no other reasons he wants to keep it? If not, do you have samples of the cabinet and countertops? Put them together so you can give him a visual of why it looks outdated to you. If not take a sample of the tile with you to the showroom and put it all together there for him. Men are visual. If it looks wrong, he will see it. Sometimes it is hard for them to imagine the same "vision" we have in our minds.

Can you convince him to donate the extra tile to someplace like Habitat for Humanity Re-Store? That way you can take the tax deduction.

Or sell it on Craigslist if you are comfortable doing that.

No, that's not the only reason. He doesn't want to have to take up the old floor either, although I'm sure I'd be the one to do most of it.

Accidentally start hitting it with a big hammer.

That's actually a tough one.
We hired out the kitchen tile job a bit too early. I later discovered FLOOR problems in the rest of house. I replaced and levelled ALL of the subfloor in the rest of the house...except the kitchen. (heck, tile was already done!).
That floor is going to need it, sooner or later. Probably seven +/- years. We are so eager to get moved in, and just can't bring ourselves to rip out 300sq ft of new tile...so, it stays for now.

And the worst part is? WE HATE IT! Not the tile. We hate the way they laid it. Exact opposite of what we asked. It was an honest mistake I guess? Wasn't just a big deal at the time. Figured we could deal with it.
BUT, given the subfloor problem underneath, and, the growing detest for the pattern as time goes by?
Almost just makes us mad everytime we see it.

BUT, it's staying for now. Figured when it's time to do that floor, we will probably be ready for a COMPLETE GUT it all renovation, rather than just a facelift.

I am pretty clumsy. If I kept dropping the sledge hammer in there......

Linelle
Reminds me of a photo I recently came across with my old golden oak cabinets, wallpaper, etc The only thing I saw was my dear dad and how much I still miss him:) Your message is spot on.

My off-the-cuff flippant response is that in my household, the decision making process is easier because I am the one with the large income, and I insist that I am willing to work extra to pay for it.

In all seriousness, household finance is a very difficult topic in any marriage. There are a lot of issues behind how you save and spend money. How you go on vacations, save money for college, buy cars etc all come from one's financial position, background, philosophy and experience. Finances color our decision making everyday.

You and your spouse need to agree on the big financial picture for your household budget. Once you two agree on a budget for the kitchen remodel, then you can negotiate for eacn thing in the remodel as long as you stay within the budget. If your budget for the kitchen remodel is 50K and your Dh's is 5K, then you need some serious dicussions before you start any work in the kitchen.

Having said all that, yes it is hard to live with people that are 'frugal' beyond reason....

Good luck.

The tile thing isn't the expense of new tile as much as he can't understand why I want new tile when we have boxes of brand new tile in the garage.

But I don't understand why he wants a new rifle when he hardly ever uses the old one, and always claims it's because he never gets a good shot at an elk. Like a new rifle would change that?

Dh likes to negotiate. With me, with the kids, with his brother, everyone. So I guess I need to find a picture of a rifle and stick it on the fridge and use it to negotiate.

Couldn't you "accidentally" bump the stacks of tile in the garage with the car and knock them over?

Then of course you'd have to get new tile because the two rooms have to flow together and there isn't enough unbroken tile left to do that!

The gun thing works.
Although, you don't understand.
See, we need a different type of gun in order to hunt a different varmit. Since, we don't have time to hunt the varmits that we already have guns for.
AND...the already addressed varmits have proven themselves way too wascally to be easily found.
BTW: It's such an expensive and beautiful gun, we're gonna a need a $1500 gunsafe to hide it in for 364 days a year.
Yes, 364 days. The remaining day? I'm going to take it out of the safe and show it to my brother during the holidays. I won't spill my drink on it, but, I might shoot a hole in kitchen floor.
It's a good thing we have that extra tile.

(Bet you're not aware that replacing a tile is much easier than patching linoleum)

LOL Dando, you've been to my house!

It does help when bil shows dh his latest and greatest and dh wants it. In fact, you've just given me a negotiation tool. Thank you! Dh wants a new scope, and it's about the same price as new tile.

Hollysprings, that is one of the reasons I want new tile now. I just hate to put this old/new tile in the dining room on a clean, fresh slab and then have to remove it in a year or two when he comes around, and I certainly don't want two totally different tiles next to each other.

I think when the time is right (meaning he'll let me sweat it out until the last minute), he'll find someone who really needs that old/new tile. He is very patient.

This is pretty funny. I'd been thinking about updates for some time, but not DH of course. I finally made an appt. with a KD (which I didn't use, but paid her for her time of course), just for a consult. After listening to her ideas, and some of mine, he got on board. I guess having a third party come along, and give another perspective, was the jump start we needed.

Just to update, the kitchen work has slowed to a crawl while we have been working on the new dining addition. The people who poured the concrete for the addition goofed up and made it higher on one side, by almost an inch. That goof may be the one thing that makes it necessary to put new flooring throughout. Haven't called in a professional yet, but dh thinks it will take a grinder and then putting a leveling coat on a large area.

He's also seeing how good the rest of the kitchen will look and how dated the old tile looks I think.

When we remodeled my 20 year old kitchen, my SO wanted to keep the appliances that were original to the house. They were all still working fine. His suggestion was to keep them and then, when we sold in the future, we could replace them before listing the house I said no, I wanted to get a new kitchen for MY use, not just for the point of resale and that I wanted to get to use all the new stuff. So that's what we did and then sold about 5 years later. We raised the ceiling to get rid of the 1985 era fluorescent lightbox, new counter with integrated sink, new faucet, painted the cabs, new lights, new backsplash, new paint and enlarged the island. Worked out just fine. Men!

Yep, we were going to keep the appliances too, but my oven has been having seizures lately, so I get to replace it. The only appliance I have that I love is my glass cooktop. But it's mostly black too, and all the old appliances are white. I don't really like cleaning stainless, but I do think it looks better with darker stains.

Window shopping never hurt. Go to the tile store, find something in a decent price range. Get some samples, bring them home, tell your dh what the cost of this new and improved tile would be. Sometimes knowing the unknown helps.

If that fails, it's time to turn on the charm. Do what you have to do.

Anybody watch Flipping Out? Remember Stacy? Jeff's client who needed more money for the reno? Jeff basically told her to do whatever she needed to do to get more money from her hubby for the reno.. That's all I'm saying

:o

Congrats on making progress. I second Lake Girl's suggestion, though. You probably should still do what you need to stack things for new flooring--just in case your husband might end up listening to a voice of higher authority, like some guy covered with concrete dust who's happy to help him save money by promising the old tile can be made to work. I.e., bring in your own authority--first--and supplement with properly coached friends and family. Surprising things can happen during a remodel, especially when time issues, even modest money issues, and a gang in agreement coalesce unexpectedly. BTW, in construction, the subs virtually ALWAYS feel whatever goes in fastest and on schedule is what should be done.

Also, with the right (wrong) DH, just what constitutes an authority whose opinion outweighs one's own can be surprising. In the case of our tiny vacation home it was the voice from beyond of the previous owners being channeled through an old folding tray table they'd kept standing in the miniature kitchen to hold...absolutely nothing worthwhile. I was emptying this mess to join the mountains of other stuff headed for Goodwill when DH told me we should keep it there, basically because they did. I laughed, but he wasn't joking. Sigh. Unlike your problem, mine (the table, not DH) fit into the waiting garbage bag quite nicely.

I agree with some of the other posters. Donate the tile, take it off your taxes next year and go shopping. Marti, you know from my other posts about my(our) mistake. We got rid of the cabinets, the same day the new cabinets arrived ! IT FELT GREAT. We made a mistake, blamed ourselves for our stupidity(NOT saying you are stupid) then rectified it. Read Dando's post AGAIN, we're all in the same boat ! :)

The truth is, leaving old things in with the new can often make the old things look terrible. He'll probably see it once it's all in, but not everyone can visualize how things are going to look when presented with a list of finishes.

We have our new cabinet doors in (on the old boxes) and I pulled the tile backsplash that DH wanted to keep so we now have drywall there (I told him I didn't want to design around it, I wanted to have better options.) Anyway, now the floors (which will be coming up) look horrifying. I have to laugh - if there was ever any thought of saving it, now would be the moment of conviction!!

Deb

...that's why I love my DH soo much and am grateful for every day...his answer on the kitchen renovation was pretty much "yes dear". Once the budget was agreed upon, it was my project, and thus I was able to make the decisions pretty much independently, since he also admists he has "no taste in design" and likes my choices.

Have a serious conversation with your DH about this project you want to undertake and come up with a budget. Resell or donate what you can to recoup cost/take tax deduction. You will need his buy-in on this for yours and his sanity. Renovations are stressful enough, haggling over nickles and dimes is just not wise and worth it once you take the plunge. Best of luck to you!

It's really not the budget as we are well below are target. It's more about the waste with dh, and the fact that he doesn't care about aesthetics. It's all about function for him. However, we talked tonight and I told him I was concerned that we will have cracks in the tile where the new slab connects to the old, or not be quite as level. We have some stress cracks in some of the tile now, which was my negotiation point.

I'm going to check into it further, but we discussed wood flooring and whether it would crack if there is any shifting between the two slabs.

When we put wood flooring in the living room, I asked on the flooring forum about putting it in the kitchen, and they unanimously said not to do it. But in the last few years, all that seems to have changed.

So wish me luck that it works. I'd much rather have wood than tile, even new tile.

I feel your pain, Marti! I jumped in on some things (painting, mostly) and the more DH saw things improving and was exposed to how things could look, the more open he was to updating other things (flooring is next). I sympathize a bit with your DH on wanting to avoid waste, but your point about possible damage of the old is worth exploring. On the flip side, though, I think some things we think are so terrible when we're obsessing about them aren't that bad when we get past the fever pitch. Perhaps you wouldn't notice the flooring much if it were already down and didn't seem like worth changing? Only you know how much you can compromise (in your marriage and in your remodeling vision).

Yep, my dh is like that. He was adamantly opposed to painting the living room anything other than white, so I did it while he was gone. He came back and loved it. Really loved it. And after that, he was open to painting all the walls.

He likes the wood in the living room, or would if it had been installed right, so I think he will be more open to wood than another tile.