I Just Don't Understand My Husband

Ok, anyone who knows anything about him is right now thinking, "yeah, and who does?" But let me tell you what happened tonight. Tonight the realtor came over and we signed the papers and discussed prices and showings and all that stuff. My husband doesn't really like to talk to strangers, he's painfully shy and while he tries to overcome it so it doesn't cripple him in life, he willingly lets others take over for him in situations like these if he can get them to. So, as expected, he let me do all the talking tonight. The realtor gave us a price she thought was a good place to start, and I suggested a little higher as we weren't going to go down much further than what she started at. She was fine with that. Then she walked around the house to see the work that we had done. She was VERY impressed with how nice it looks now. Well, except for the 2 rooms that didn't get painted. Now that the rest of the house looks so good, they look hideous. She suggested that we go ahead and paint these rooms too. Of course I, being the woman of the house and the one concerned with these sorts of things, agreed that it should be done. Chris, meanwhile, was downstairs sitting in his chair waiting for us to get done with the tour. So we come downstairs and she tells him how nice it looks, but that he really should paint the last 2 rooms. He knows that I agree. I did mention to her that he really didn't want to do them. It's a lot of work to clear all the furniture out and take everything down from the walls and patch the nail holes and prime and paint wallpaper. He was soooo excited to be done with painting.

Here is why we need to paint one of the rooms:

The water damage is actually just from leaving the window open when it rained, and is from before we moved in. The old windows weren't installed right and the water filled up the sill and flowed over into the house instead of out the window. With our new windows it is not a problem; plus we replaced the sill. Now it just needs to be painted.

Here is what I don't understand about my husband: he is upset about having to do more painting. I can understand his frustration, but the realtor said it should be done! He truly believes it will not add value to the house or help sell it any faster. He thinks that anyone thinking of buying this particular house will already know it needs tons of work and they had better be handy or rich. I reminded him that the realtor had told us if we listed the house without doing any work to it, she'd put it $20K lower than now. I asked him, didn't he think a few hundred dollars of paint and a few months of weekends and evenings were worth $20K? He said, get this, No. Do you know the reason he has made me live in this hideous house for 8 years without painting? He claims it's because the boys would mess it up, but really it's because he just didn't want to do the painting. I asked him, "so you would rather leave the 2 rooms undone and take $10K less on the house?" and he said Yes. Ugh!!! And just how does he think he is going to be able to afford his 4 brm 2 bath house on at least an acre if he doesn't get all he can out of this house??? He had no answer to that, just that he didn't think paint was going to make a difference.

He sat in a sulk after the realtor left and then decided that if he has to paint this room he is not going to set the computers back up when he is done, I'll have to go without internet until we move. Keep in mind that we don't even have a house to move to yet, so this could be 2 months or more. How hard would it be to set it up downstairs in the meantime? How hard would it be to set it back up? Oh no, the computers would go to storage, and therefore would not come back out until we move. So I said fine, don't paint, be a baby. I'll call the realtor tomorrow and tell her that he just doesn't want to do it, and see what she says.