Do you and your husband or SO decorate your home together?

[seaglass]

Meaning - Do you both decide on the color of the room and what objects will decorate it? Or do you split rooms - one does the living room, the other the den? Or does one primarily have decorating responsibility?

I'm a little bit irritated. My husband is a firefighter and collects firefighter paraphenalia. He has hundreds of trucks and all kinds of other firefighter-related objects - a fair amount that I have given him. I bought him a display case and he built shelves downstairs to display his stuff. But for some reason every single room in the house has some type of firefighter stuff in it.

Yesterday my husband put up shelves in our dining room that my mom gave me for my birthday. I spent about 40 minutes deciding what to put on the shelves, based on size and color of the objects. This afternoon I found a firefighter object on one of the shelves. I didn't say anything and I'm not really mad, just aggravated. (Just so you know this goes back to a couple months ago when we painted the kitchen yellow and my husband asked me if I thought he should paint the bricks around our woodstove too. I said no, I didn't think it would look good and then he painted them! I'm still wondering why he asked.).

I know this is not a big deal but I'm wondering if other people's husbands/SOs like to share in decorating duties.

[leftofthedial]

1. my ex is helping me to decorate

I'm using all the broken and leftover shit she didn't want when we split.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

2. We have similar tastes...

So we do it all together. Our living room will have a bunch of United Kingdom stuff...We're going to get a Manchester United flag for behind the couch, a red or yellow couch soon, we have red ottomans, and we'll get some rugs and stuff. It'll be quite warm when we're done. We already have some guinness stuff in there....It looks weird now, but it'll come together.
Duckie

[MissB]

3. He had macrame hangars for his speakers

when I first met him, so no, he doesn't "do" decorating.

Can you learn to accept the firefighter paraphernalia? When you're old and gray and he's dead, it'll probably be either the thing you cherish about him, or it'll be the perfect time to get rid of it (with a vengeance).

[seaglass]

5. I would never get rid of it, I just wish I could keep it contained in

one or two rooms.

I have to say that at least he doesn't insist that we hang his 8 foot stuffed sailfish on the living room wall.:-)

[MissB]

7. Do you have a spare room?

Can you work out a surprise redecorating so that the spare room is the firefighting room? Paint it fire engine red, hang a neon light, whatever?

[seaglass]

11. Unfortunately no. I specifically chose furniture with red in it

for our refinished basement and he does have most of his stuff in there but it's also scattered through the living room, entry way, our bedroom and now the dining room. The only firefighter free rooms are the bathroom and the kitchen.

[Nikia]

4. I wish we could decorate

We live in a duplex where we aren't allowed to make any changes, including putting nails in the wall. We don't really have enough room to have much more than our furniture.
It is one reason why we look forward to being able to buy a home.

[seaglass]

8. That is really strict I never heard of that before. It doesn't sound

like they want people to stay long.

[cssmall]

6. If you call me sitting there and saying, "looks nice" then fuck yeah!

[seaglass]

9. That's the kind of effort I can appreciate! n/t

[cssmall]

10. Note about your deal:

The firefighting objects are of a high importance, which I'm sure you know all ready, to him. Dedicate some space to those and there you are.

I mean, my wife doesn't want my archaeology stuff around all that much, but I do have some stuff and I'm sure rocks look worse the Firefighter's stuff. *EDIT*

[seaglass]

13. Yes, I realize they are as important to him as my books are to me.

And we do have a lot of space dedicated to his firefighter stuff, it's just that it keeps spreading.

[Kerrytravelers]

12. Firefighters...

[politicat]

14. Kinda sorta...

We have agreed on some basics (no browns or tans as major colors, a more modern feel than traditional, efficiency in most things, always cat friendly) but we have some differences, too. He has a dragon collection that lives on the mantel, but I'm not so sure on it...

This is one place where I might take a stand and say, no, the collections need to stay contained. We had to do that with books, because we have about 3000 of them between the two of us. So we made a rule that the shelves in the living room and dining room do not have books on them.

And you know, it's okay to take a piece off a shelf and put it back. You could also do a rotating display, changing what's on the shelves every couple of months or so. It's your house, too.