I’ve (30/m)been married to my loving spouse(30/f) for about 4 years but known dated for much longer. They are a bit of a perfectionist, which she admits to herself. It has stopped her from doing things she is good at and previously enjoyed and also trying new hobby’s and things because in her words she cannot fail at something she never begins or immediately expects herself to be amazing at something she picks up.
Now it has been starting to wear on me more ever since we bought our first home. We’ve both loved the idea of doing projects around the house but we clearly have 2 different sets of standards. To me, as long as something turns out better than it was before, then I consider it a win, but we are also learning and saving by doing it ourselves. To her we need to go to nth degree of detail on nearly everything and it always drags projects on way longer than it should, and sucks all of the enjoyment out of it and makes me feel miserable thinking of all the things we could be doing than spending time and money worrying about the small stuff.
She is more than open to hiring stuff out, but I try to warn her that no contractor will likely go to the degree of detail and craftsmanship that she expects, and personally I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of it when that happens. But we also don’t have money to be throwing around on every little thing we want so I try to compromise by doing it ourselves but it just seems to never be good enough.
For example, I built some bookcases for her to store her collection. I am by no means a master woodworker but I got quality materials and I researched plans and got to work. I built them over the span of about a month. I spent about another couple months doing painting and touch ups when we had the time. It got to the point that I ended up letting her take over and finish them by herself to her standards since I felt that I had done the best that I could possibly do and she was
still pointing out flaws. 3 months after that she is still doing “ touch ups” I’m now convinced this will just never end.
What am I supposed to do about this? I’m ready to move on to have some fun on the weekends and enjoy our home for what it is and not always feeling like every room is a work zone
TL;DR
How do I handle home projects when my spouse is a perfectionist?